


In Medias Res

by Starlingthefool



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 52,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's the most resilient infection? What's more infectious than a cold, more deadly than HIV? What lingers in your blood forever?</p><p>Love, of course. Mal has always known that. Her pointman Eames may dismiss her for a romantic, but for better or worse, love has gotten her this far.</p><p>(A mirror-verse AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, first I read [this fic](http://kaydeefalls.livejournal.com/614731.html?format=light) by Kaydeefalls. Then I read [this fic](http://chibi-lurrel.livejournal.com/269457.html?format=light) by Chibi_lurrel.
> 
> Then my brain exploded, as it does, and insisted I rewrite _Inception_ in prose format with Mal as an extractor, Dom as a shade, and everyone in a different position on the team. Right. Here we go then.
> 
> Thanks to Cadeira, for betaing the beginning of this fic, who told me to trust my tangents and not feel too beholden to the script. Laria_Gwynn and Baubling beta'd, and deserve muffins and hugs and fluffy animals. Gelbwax and GollumGollum were like those people on the sidelines of marathons, offering water bottles and Cliff bars to runners.
> 
>  **Trigger warnings** for references to suicide/suicide ideation, graphic violence, and creepy imagery.
> 
> I have lifted some dialogue in this story directly from the script by Christopher Nolan, and obviously, the story, characters, and premise all belong to him. I intend no infringement, and made no money from this endeavor.

“What’s the most resilient infection?” Mal asks the man standing next to her. He blinks in slight surprise. She smiles, mouth closed. “Do you know?”

“I can’t say I do, Ms. Cobb.” He grabs two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and hands one to her.

“Call me Mal,” she insists. “Guess.”

Robert Fischer looks at her momentarily, taking a sip of champagne before looking back out over the floor of the busy casino, the controlled chaos of gamblers, security guards, waitresses.

“Guess!” she insists, smiling wider, taking a step closer. “What’s more infectious than a cold, more persistent than HIV? What lingers in your blood forever?”

Robert smiles back at her; the expression is soft, indulgent, but still closed off. He has so many secrets, Mal thinks. “An idea?” he hazards.

Mal blinks, then looks down to cover her surprise. “No, though that is a... compelling answer. No, cher. It’s love.”

Fischer looks at her a moment, then bursts out laughing.

She affects a pout. “Why do you laugh? I’m deadly earnest, Robert.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He sets his champagne down. “I’m just afraid I don’t agree.”

“You don’t?”

“I suppose I could be the exception that proves the rule,” Robert says dryly. “The one patient with an unexplainable immunity to this... infection.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of romantic love. Star-crossed love, always doomed to die suddenly or decay slowly. But there are other kinds of love.” Mal pulls a cigarette from the silver case in her bag, then waits, cigarette dangling from her fingertips, as Robert fumbles out his lighter. She watches him carefully from beneath her eyelashes as he lights it.

“Enlighten me, then,” he says.

She inhales a mouthful of smoke. “The love of a son for his father, perhaps.”

Robert freezes. _Bingo,_ a voice says in her head. The voice is not her own, and she imagines gagging it, forcing it into silence.

Mal blows a stream of smoke discreetly to the side. “Love sinks its teeth into your heart and never releases you. No matter how you fight. There’s no remission. No cure. No surviving it. The best and worst kind of disease.”

She lets her eyes fill with empathy for poor, shaken Robert as he gulps down the rest of his champagne. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I should not have said–”

“What of it?” Robert says, turning away from her. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead.”

Mal runs a hand down his arm. “And yet, the infection persists.”

He turns back to her. They’re standing very close, and this is it, the moment, he is going to confess every sin and secret he has –

Her phone rings.

Mal takes it gracefully, laughs with exactly the right kind of embarrassment, excuses herself with enough of a promise in her eyes to ensure that Robert won’t go anywhere. She walks around the corner and answers her phone.

“Eames,” she says, patience frayed. “I hope you’re calling me to say you’ve gotten into the safe?”

“Sadly, no. We have a problem,” Eames says. “And it’s heading your way.”

Mal whirls around. Her heart – that stupid, weak organ – is hammering against her breast bone.

Dom is coming up the stairs, dressed in a fine black tux, looking like he belongs in one of those gangster movies he and Arthur loved so much.

“Merde.”

“Indeed. Plan B?” he suggests.

“Yes,” she says, and hangs up the phone. She edges to the corner, just close enough to hear Dom talking.

“–Mr. Charles, I’m your head of security down here, you remember me,” Dom murmurs.

Mal rounds the corner, leaning against the wall. She knows the pose she’s striking practically screams “femme fatale”, but the plot of this story is not really in her hands anymore.

“Hello, Dom,” she says.

Both men suddenly turn to her. Robert’s eyes are blank, and Dom’s are...

Cold. There is nothing in them, and the sight of it still causes her skin to break out in goosebumps.

“Mr. Charles, do you know–”

“Mal is my ex-wife,” Dom says, and oh, that stings.

“Mal, is this true?” Robert asks her.

“Remember what I said, Robert, about the most resilient infection? He’s mine.”

Dom lets out a muffled shout as Eames slips a cloth over his nose and mouth. Mal grimaces a little, wanting to turn away but unwilling to do so. Dom glares at her the whole time that he’s trying to fight off Eames – unsuccessfully, thank god: Eames was always that little bit stronger, faster, and smarter than Dom. That little bit crueler, as well.

“Robert,” she says, letting some of her fright become visible, using it like a weapon. She holds out her hands to him. “Are you all right? What did he say to you?”

He’s still looking at Dom, whose struggles are growing progressively weaker as the chloroform takes hold.

“Robert,” she hisses.

He finally looks back at her. The look in his eyes; she knows then that she’s already lost him.

“He said that.... that this was a dream.”

All the movement in the casino stops, and the room goes eerily quiet; not even the fake cheer of the slot machines disrupts the silence. Mal feels the weight of accusatory stares from the all around. She looks again at Dom, his blue eyes still watching her with hatred, even as they struggle to stay open.

“Plan C it is then,” Eames says, and shoots her.

She wakes up in the damp heat of the hotel room, swearing in every language she can remember.

“What happened?” Nash asks nervously. He’s always nervous, sweating. Mal despises him, the gormless idiot. He was, unfortunately, the only forger that was willing to take on this job.

“We failed,” she says, ripping the IV out of her wrist. “Plan C.”

He only looks at her, dazed.

“Change!” she shouts at him.

He changes. Just in time. Mal gets a hand around his neck and a gun under his jaw just before Eames wakes up. He trains a gun on Fischer, who wakes up seconds later.

“Oh god,” he says, at the sight that greets him. His ailing, weakened father, with a furious woman holding a gun to his jaw. Another man holding a gun on him.

“Robert,” Nash says, in Maurice Fischer’s rasping voice. “What have you done?”

Robert can’t take his eyes off his father, mouth working noiselessly.

 _“Robert,”_ Maurice hisses.

“You’re dead. You... you died, what the hell is this–”

“You’ve been dreaming, Robert,” Mal tells him. “But now, it’s time to wake up.”

“How–”

“Just tell them what they want to know, boy,” Maurice says, cutting him off. “It’s the only way we’ll both get out of this alive.”

“Best do as your old man says,” Eames advises. “He knows what we’re on about.”

“Look,” Fischer says, holding a hand out. “Let’s be reasonable, just let him go.”

“I am being reasonable,” Mal says. “You will give me the information that I want, or I will show you what it’s like when I am _un_ reasonable.”

“Please, Ms. Cobb, we can talk about this–”

Mal shoots Nash in the foot. She has had enough, wants this job to be over, and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. She and Dom had done this before. It’s unpleasant, but so is everything else about this job. And after all, it’s just a dream.

Maurice Fischer screams, falling to his knees. As he does so, his face flickers, just for a second. Shit.

Distantly, she can hear the sound of “Hymne à l'amour” beginning to play. A minute left. There’s gunfire outside the building. Fischer’s projections will be closing in, then.

“Stop whimpering,” she tells Maurice. “It’s unbecoming in a man of your age. Well?” Mal asks Robert. “Where shall I shoot him next?”

Robert looks up at her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it fucking matters,” Maurice screams.

Robert flinches, glancing at the old man on the ground. When he looks back to Mal, his eyes are set, resolved.

All is lost, she realizes. He’s calling her bluff. She hopes her resignation doesn’t show on her face. She certainly doesn’t drop the gun that’s aimed at Nash. Forty-five seconds left.

“My father died,” Robert Fischer says. “On Wednesday, May 2nd, at 3:14 in the morning. It had been a long time coming.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Maurice groans. Mal realizes that he doesn’t even know that his forgery slipped. The man is beyond useless.

“This is a dream,” Robert whispers. Thirty seconds.

“Are you willing to bet your father’s life on it?” Mal says, cocking the gun again.

“That’s not my father,” Fischer insists.

Twenty-five seconds.

“Fine,” Mal says, and pulls the trigger. She watches Robert’s face as she does, the split second of panicked regret. The body doesn’t disappear, or revert back to Nash’s. She wipes the blood splatters off her chin and moves over to the bed. She pushes Robert, and he falls on his back without any resistance. She touches the barrel of the gun to his chest, right over his heart.

“This is your last chance,” she whispers.

“No,” Robert says. Mal realizes that Eames is gone, and it’s just the two of them in the room. “But it could be yours.”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Mal scolds. She feels exhausted. Ten seconds.

Robert looks at her; he looks as fatigued as she is. “I must say, Ms. Cobb, that your reputation is well-deserved. I am impressed.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. Considers shooting him, just to get rid of that patronizing tone.

Five seconds.

“It’s been a pleasure,” he says. “I’ll be in tou...”

Mal wakes up. Eames is gently extricating the IV from her wrist. He looks up at her with a question on his face. She shakes her head, just slightly.

“You shot me, you fucking bitch!” Nash hisses from the other side of the carriage.

“Oi,” Eames says, gathering up the PASIV cord. “Watch your fucking language.”

“She fucking shot me, I think I’m allowed to be pissed off. I hope you at least got–”

“No,” Mal answers shortly. She looks at the young man crouched by the PASIV. “Todashi, you know what to do.”

He takes the roll of bills from her hand and nods. “Goodbye, Mal. And good luck.”

She picks up her coat and purse, checking her watch.

“Wait, where are you–” Nash begins.

“The next stop is in five minutes. I’m getting off.”

“We’re still twenty minutes out of Bucharest, Mal,” Eames reminds her. “He’s not going to search every compartment for us."

Todashi looks up, his fingers on Fischer’s wrist. “He’ll be out for another half-hour, anyway. I doubt he even knows what happened.”

“He knew," Mal says. “Even if Nash hadn't fucked up his forge, he would have known.”

“Hey--” Nash starts.  


“Besides, I don’t like trains,” Mal says, cutting him off. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

She doesn’t look at any of them – not at Eames’ calculating face, nor Nash’s angry one, nor Robert, still sleeping – when she leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

Mal’s alone in an anonymous hotel room in Bucharest, her metal top in her fingers, and she is assuredly not crying.

She hates being alone, possibly more than anything else. And there is a lot that she hates about the life that she’s trapped herself in. But still, she’s not crying. There’s no more tears in her, she believes.

The metal top is warm on her fingers. She gives in to habit, and spins it on the desk. She watches it, swallowing around the tightness in her throat, even though she knows that this must be reality. A dream would never be so terrible as this sustained misery.

The phone rings, and she snatches the top off the table before it can fall, holding it as she answers the phone.

“Hello?” she says.

“Maman?” It’s Phillipa’s voice, James piping up in sweet counterpoint.

“My darlings,” she purrs, and okay, yes, she is crying now. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much.”

The high of talking to Phillipa and James lasts for only a minute, cut cruelly short by Dom’s mother, who hated Mal even before she... even before everything. She’s contemplating throwing the phone at the wall – pitching a true tantrum befitting the _belle folle_ persona that she has cultivated for this life – when there is a knock at the door.

She grabs her gun from her purse and waits.

“It’s Eames, petal. Open the door.”

She sighs, puts the gun down, and unlocks the door. Eames lets himself in.

“You didn’t even check the spy hole, did you,” he scolds as she collapses back on the couch. “I could have had four of Cobol’s finest holding guns to my head.”

“Or Interpol agents,” Mal interjects. “But if you really wanted to sell me out, you’d already have done it.”

“It’d hardly be worth it, for that paltry price on your head.” Eames leans against the wall and considers her. “You okay?” he asks. “I mean, Dom showing up and all, I know that you–”

“I’m fine,” she says, cutting him off. “Well, relatively.”

He sits down on the couch next to her. She accepts his arm around her shoulders gratefully, leaning into his warmth. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it, darling?”

His warm, masculine scent is so achingly familiar. She lets it surround her for only a few seconds before she pushes herself off the couch to gather her things.

“The hell of it is, when he doesn’t show up, I’m not sure whether to be relieved or heartbroken. Insane, I know.”

They face each other in loaded silence until Eames’ phone beeps. “That’s our ride,” he says, relieved. “Have you talked to Nash?”

“No. Have you?”

“Nope. I’m not waiting for the idiot. Shall we?”

They head for the stairs, Eames holding the door open for her. She smiles at him. How many men would walk all four flights down with her, knowing her dislike for elevators?

“What am I going to do without you?” Mal wonders out loud.

“Whyever would you need to find out?”

“Don’t treat me like a child, Eames. Kobayashi wants you as his pointman in Madrid, yes?”

Unpleasant surprise flits across Eames’ face, before he reforms his expression into nonchalance. “Who told you that?”

“He did.” At Eames’ look, she adds, “After I asked him.”

“You asked?” he says, with a hint of accusation. “I know how persuasive you can be.”

Mal rolls her eyes. “I was perfectly genteel, I assure you.”

Eames has the grace to look ashamed. He might be faking, but Mal chooses to believe otherwise. “I was planning on telling you,” he says.

In a text message from a continent away, most likely, but that hardly matters. “Oh, let’s not do that,” Mal says. “You owe me nothing, and I owe you my life. Or at least my continuing freedom.”

Eames gets to the door to the lobby before she does, and pauses with his hand on the bar. “You’d have gotten along without me, I’m sure.”

Mal’s not sure she agrees. When Eames found her, she’d had Interpol and several Moscow crime syndicates after her blood, and she had been half out of her head with grief. “I'm happy for you. Give my regards to... well. Europe, I suppose.”

She wonders if he'll see Arthur, but is too cowardly to ask.

He pushes the door and holds it open for her. “Gladly.”

She’s going to miss him. Mal hates being alone.

They walk out into the lobby together. Mal puts on her Hollywood starlet sunglasses that cover half her face, and scrawls someone else's name on the slip as they check out. It’s just coming on evening outside in Bucharest, the sun slipping behind the buildings, long shadows. As they wait, a limo pulls up in front of them.

“We’re going in style, I see,” Mal says, surprised.

Eames looks slightly ill. “I didn’t order us a limo.”

The driver jumps out, walks briskly around to the side. “Ms. Cobb, Mr. Eames,” he says, nodding. Mal feels a sickening flutter in her stomach. He opens the door for them.

Nash’s bloody, swollen, terrified eyes stare at her from inside the limo.

“He sold you out,” Robert Fischer says, leaning forward into her view. “Came to me begging for his life, offering to deliver the two of you to me personally.”

“Of course he did,” Mal says, her lip curling up in disgust.

Robert looks at her appreciatively. “Would you prefer to deal with him yourself?”

The driver, still standing next to her, offers Mal a gun. She looks at it, then away. “No, thank you.”

“Not so trigger-happy outside of a dream, I see.” He nods to the driver, and Nash is pulled out of the car. Two other men, who apparently were waiting and watching outside the lobby doors, take him into another car.

“What are you going to do to him?” Mal asks.

“Kill him,” Fischer says. “For impersonating my father.”

Mal suppresses the shudder that’s trying to work its way down her shoulders, and meets his eyes with as much indifference as she can muster.

“Come in,” Fischer says, beckoning them. Feeling as though she’s stepping into a lion’s den, she does so. Eames sits next to her; she takes comfort from his solidity and warmth.

“Mr. Fischer. Pleasure to see you again, and all that. What do you want from us?” he asks, his tone bored and insouciant.

“Inception,” Fischer says. Mal immediately looks away, watches the streets slide past them as the car begins to move.

“Bollocks,” Eames replies without missing a beat.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“You’re saying it can’t be done?”

“Course it can. It’s bloody difficult, but it’s possible. I’m saying we won’t. We’re not in the game to screw with people’s heads.”

Robert seems nonplussed. “I can give you the information that you were paid to steal from me. Unless you enjoy having an enormous price on your heads...?”

“Pfft,” Eames says rudely, waving it off. “I’ve pissed off far scarier entities than one measly multinational corporation.”

“So I gathered,” Fischer replies, his tone dry.

“You know there’s only one payment that I’d accept for this job,” Mal says suddenly, not looking away from the window.

She can feel the weight of Fischer’s gaze. “I can hazard a guess.”

“Mal, darling,” Eames says in an undertone. “I thought–”

“Eames,” she says, silencing him. “This is different.”

Eames leans back in his seat, moving away from her; his face is cool, calculating.

Mal turns to face Fischer. “I want my children. I want my life back. I want to go home.” She takes a deep breath. “If you can deliver that, I will perform inception for you. If not, stop wasting our time.”

Robert smiles grimly, and hands her a file that’s been sitting on the seat next to him. “The main competitor for my firm is Proclus Global. Its CEO is getting dangerously close to controlling a major part of the world’s energy supply.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Eames says. “But are we talking about Saito, or are we talking about yourself? Last I knew, Fischer-Morrow was the dominant company in energy shares.”

Robert crosses his legs, squares his shoulders. “Fischer-Morrow is dissolving.”

Mal gapes. In her peripheral vision, she can see that Eames’ expression is just as shocked as hers. “What?” she asks.

“My father spent his entire life building this company from the ground up. I’m going to dismantle it the same way.” Robert leans back and quirks an eyebrow at them. “Imagine if you two had succeeded in extracting that secret from me. Cobol Engineering wouldn’t have even believed you.”

“Okay,” Eames says, covering up his shock with a veneer of skepticism. “So you’re dissolving Fischer-Morrow. You want us to convince Saito to do the same? Why?”

“After my father’s company is gone–” Eames catches Mal’s eye, both of them noting the wording, “–there’s going to be a power vacuum. Proclus Global is the most obvious one to step in. If it does, it’ll just become the new Fischer-Morrow, which is precisely what I don’t want.”

“And what do you want?”

“A revolution,” Fischer replies, shrugging. “Failing that, I’ll accept general chaos. I don't really care.”

* * *

Eames isn’t the kind of man to ask _why._

No, wait, that’s a lie. It’s his job to ask those kinds of questions, the uncomfortable ones, the questions that make people squirm in their seats or occasionally start throwing punches. He digs and digs until he comes up with the raw motivation for even seemingly innocuous actions.

Eames isn’t the kind of man to ask incredibly wealthy and mildly unhinged clients _why._

Mal does not get the same pass. Not on this, anyway.

“Mind telling me what the bloody fuck is going on?” Eames asks, once they’re safely away from Robert Fischer’s limo and his creepy, casual plans of destruction. They’re in Bucharest Baneasa airport, heading towards the ticketing counter.

“You told me you would never, ever perform an inception,” Eames adds, grabbing her arm when Mal doesn’t deign to answer him. “That you would die before you did that to someone.”

“That was before I spent seven months away from my children,” she replies defiantly, shaking him off.

Eames sighs, frustrated. “Mal–”

“Half a year of their lives, Eames, gone forever. You have no idea what that feels like. I will be damned if I turn down an opportunity to get back to them, once and for all.”

They glare at each other for a moment. Mal breaks before he does, looking down at the ground.

“Eames,” she murmurs. “You don’t have to do this with me. I know you have a job with Kobayashi–”

“To hell with that, darling,” he says. “You think I’m going to bail out of the job of a lifetime to be Kobayashi’s bloody gopher? Forget it.”

Mal sighs, smiles at him. “What would I do without you?”

“Continue to terrorize the dreamsharing world, I’m sure.” He can’t help it; god help him, he actually _likes_ Mal, despite her fallen heroine demeanor. She's brilliant, unscrupulous, and beautiful. Eames has always had a weakness where smartarsed, half-mad brunettes are concerned. “Come on, I’ll buy you some of those bloody teacakes that you like.”

Sitting in two of the uncomfortable folding chairs in the airport’s cafe, Eames rips open a packet of biscuits and asks, “All right. Where are we going, then?”

Mal blows on her tea. “Hong Kong. Saito keeps at least one home on the island, and the satellite offices of Proclus Global.”

“Should be easier to worm my way in there than into Tokyo. My Japanese is shit,” Eames agrees.

“There’s also no extradition treaty with America.”

Of course, Mal would already know that. He makes a mental note to double check it, though. “Helpful, that.”

Mal nods. “I want you to get us a working space, and start digging up his skeletons.”

Eames nods. “How will you be occupying yourself?”

“I’m going to Paris,” Mal says softly.

Eames raises an eyebrow. “Bit of a risk, isn’t it?”

“A calculated one. I need to get a team together. My father can help.”

Eames doesn't argue. “Yusuf’s available as an architect. I can probably convince him to work with us again, considering the payout.”

Mal nods, looking out the window. “We need a chemist and a forger then.”

Eames wonders if he should tell her that Arthur’s in Paris. But considering how it went the last time the two of them saw each other, he decides to keep silent. He’d rather not be the one to push the two of them back together.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes a moment for Miles to notice her, sitting two rows back, after he enters his lecture hall and sits at his desk. In that moment, she watches him, trying to read him like he’s a stranger: her father’s shoulders are stooped, curled forward towards his work. He moves with the same briskness that she remembers, but it’s as though his features have sharpened; care and age have strengthened the lines of his body, not softened or worn them. He is doing well, then, as well as can be expected.

She shifts forward in her seat. “Bonsoir, Papa.”

He freezes, and then his hand goes over his heart. To others, it would appear as a gesture of shock; she knows that he is touching the locket he wears around his neck, the tiny ticking watch that is his totem. “Mal.”

She stands, making her way down the aisle, until she’s standing in front of his desk. “You don’t seem very happy to see me.”

“My joy is at war with my fear of seeing you arrested. Again.”

“Extradition from France is no easy thing,” Mal says, and she knows it’s overconfident. France is, of course, the first place she ran to when she left California. The authorities here know to look for her, and she must be careful.

Miles looks at her over the rim of his glasses. “For you, I think they’d make the effort.”

She says nothing, only looks at him, refusing to budge.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” he says, weakening. “Get over here and give your old man a hug.”

Smiling, she does. It feels entirely too good, too familiar; the smell of his aftershave, chalkdust, and coffee envelops her, and his corduroy is comfortable under her arms. It reminds of her of the past, and makes her feel weak. (So much of her life these days is a fight: a fight to survive, to keep moving, to not give in to the weakness that tries to drag her down like gravity.) She releases him, and takes a step back.

“I have a letter for the children,” she says, pulling it from her pocket. “Tell Phillipa to read it to James, I’m sure she could use the practice.”

Miles takes it. “It’ll take more than just a letter to convince them they still have a mother, you know.”

“I know, Papa. I’m working on it.”

“Mallorie, love –”

He’s going to ask her to turn herself in again, and she can’t stand it. “I _said_ that I’m working on it," she snaps.

He looks away, at her feet. After a moment, he says, “I can’t believe it took becoming a fugitive for you to learn to wear sensible shoes.”

She looks down at the comfortable leather boots she’s wearing – no heels, nothing extraneous or luxurious, just well-made and durable. She misses her open-toed stilettos, her suede ankle boots, her vintage mules. She could afford such things, but they’re the trappings of another life. They don’t fit in with this one, where all that she owns must be carried from place to place. Everything else must be disposable. “I find that I am full of unexplored depths,” she says.

“That’s always been true, love,” he says, smiling at her gently. He sits back down, and she leans against his desk. “So. You’re working?”

For some reason, she feels the need to fidget. The tone of the question is light, the emotion behind it is not. “Yes. It’s for a very powerful man. He’s promised that he can get me home.”

“Do you believe him?” Miles asks.

“I have to.” Mal looks back down at the scuff marks on her boots. “I need a team.”

Miles leans forward. “You’re here to corrupt one of my students.”

Mal smiles. “As you corrupted your daughter and her husband.”

Miles closes his eyes, pained. “Don’t remind me.”

Mal pats her father’s hand. “I need a chemist and a forger. And a lot of luck,” she adds.

Miles is looking at her. She recognizes this expression, remembers it from being a teenager: this was how her father looked at her when he was trying to discover what she was hiding. (Which in those days, of course, was rather a lot.)

“I’m still seeing Dom,” she says, taking a deep breath.

“And he’s still...”

“Sabotaging me. My work. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s tried to kill Eames and me.”

“And?” Miles prompts gently.

“We’re handling it,” Mal says. That’s all she can say. “One dream at a time.”

Her father knows better than to take that at face value. He also knows better than to argue with her. “I think the phrase is, ‘One day at a time.’”

“That too,” she says. She stands up, wipes chalk dust off the front of her skirt.

“Let me make some calls about the chemist,” he says, then hesitates.

“What is it?”

“I do know of one forger, here in Paris.”

Mal cocks her head, trying to puzzle out what her father isn’t telling her. “Are they good?”

Miles sighs. “He’s the best.”

Oh. “You mean...”

Miles nods. “Arthur’s back in Paris. And I know he’s looking for work.”

Mal slumps against her father’s desk. “Arthur and I... aren’t on good terms.”

“I know. Have you at least apologized for trying to shoot him?”

“He provoked me!”

He gives her a look. Mal sighs.

“I suppose I’ll be leading with an apology,” she grumbles.

* * *

Arthur hasn’t really changed; he’s still slim, compact, dressed impeccably. His poker face is also impeccable, and he looks utterly unsurprised to see her. This could possibly be explained by the numerous empty glasses surrounding him at the small bar.

Arthur blinks. “Bonjour, Mal.”

“Bonjour, Arthur. May I sit?”

He nods at the stool next to him. “By all means.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence. She expected this, and rides it out as gracefully as she can while waiting for Arthur to break it.

“You look well,” he says finally.

“I look like I’ve been living out of a suitcase for seven months,” she corrects. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair is unstyled, in a plain ponytail, and she’s acutely aware of it, sitting next to Arthur in his three-piece suit. “It hardly seems decent to be walking around Paris, looking like this,” she adds.

“Yes, well. Needs must, when the devil drives,” Arthur says, and Mal cringes a little. It’s something that Dom used to say.

“I want to apologize,” Mal says stiffly. “For what happened last time I saw you. I was under a lot of stress.”

“So I’d gathered.”

“You were saying some awful things.” Mal remembers this part clearly. The rest of the episode is somewhat hazy in her memory. The first few weeks following Dom’s funeral and her flight to Europe are all blurred together.

Arthur nods. “I was.”

“And in all fairness, you did shoot back at me.” She has the scar on her arm to prove it. (It was from a ricochet. She’s fairly sure Arthur wasn’t actually trying to hit her.)

The bartender stops cleaning empty glasses, looking over at the two of them. Arthur offers her a small, apologetic smile. “Encore, s’il vous plaît.” He looks sideways at Mal. “Do you want a drink?”

“Whatever you’re having,” Mal says, and crosses her legs. She’s been abstaining, after that last unfortunate binge in Kiev with Eames and the Saburov syndicate, but this conversation will go better if she’s less sober. She can already feel her palms sweating.

“Oui, monsieur, madame,” the young woman says, then scurries away.

“Why are you here, Mal?” Arthur asks when the bartender is out of earshot.

“Aside from clearing my conscience?”

“You'd need to work a lot harder to make me believe that,” Arthur says. His tone is flat, but there’s a vicious undercurrent in it.

Mal takes a breath. “I need a forger. For a very important job, for some very important people.” She doesn’t bother parsing her words; Arthur used to indulge her way of talking around subjects, but she doesn’t want to try the patience of a man who probably has more reasons to hate her than most.

“They’re all important people,” Arthur says. “In their own minds, at least.”

“This is different,” she says. “This is bigger.”

Arthur looks distinctly unimpressed, so Mal grabs a napkin and a pen from her pocket. She writes two names and one word down on the paper and pushes it over to Arthur, who takes it after a moment. His face doesn’t betray any emotion, which is exactly how she knows that she maybe – _maybe_ – has a chance.

“What would it take for you to work for me?” she asks, leaning forward.

“A miracle,” he says, fingers still on the napkin. Succinct and to the point, that’s Arthur.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” she says, tapping the napkin. “That’s why I need you.”

He says nothing, but he’s not walking away either. Mal decides to press her luck. “This job could get me back to my children.”

Arthur pauses, his drink raised halfway to his lips, and then takes a large swallow of it. He puts it down and says, out of the blue, “You know, it was the two of you that made me believe in love.”

Mal leans back, confused. “What?”

“You and Dom. Your life together, your kids, your work. Everything the two of you built. I saw it, got to be part of it, and thought, _so that’s what all these poets are talking about._ " He takes a drink. "And look how well that turned out.”

Mal forgets how young Arthur is. He was only twenty-one when she met him, nearly ten years ago: a precocious, guarded young man with a burdensome past, quick to fight and slow to trust. Mal had loved him almost unconditionally, nearly as strongly as she’d loved Dom. “Arthur,” she says softly.

“I want an explanation,” Arthur says roughly. “I want -- no, I need you to show me what happened. That’s my price.”

Her heart is beating in her chest like a fragile, panicked bird. The last thing she wants to do is revisit that memory on purpose. She’s haunted by it enough as it is. Still, as Arthur said – as Dom liked to say – needs must when the devil drives. She wonders who the devil is, in this case: is it Dom? Is it Fischer, offering her an impossible temptation? Or is it her own selfish need to be with her children?

She takes a large swallow of her cocktail, choking on it a bit. “Agreed. But,” she says, “it happens on my time. I can’t have it distract me from the job.”

Arthur avoids her eyes, looks instead at the napkin on the bar. Then he nods, slowly.

Mal sets down her drink. “I’m meeting with a potential chemist in an hour. Come with me.”

“We’ll have to lose your tail, first,” Arthur says, and Mal freezes. “Sitting at the window. Blue tie. He came in two minutes after you did.”

Mal looks in the mirror behind the bar. He’s dressed too well to be a policeman or Interpol officer. “Cobol Engineering is in France now, I suppose?”

“Just opened offices in La Défense.” He finishes his drink. “Are you armed?”

Mal sighs. “Just a knife. You?”

“Of course I’m armed.” Arthur glances down. “At least you’re wearing shoes you can actually run in.”

“I can run perfectly well in heels,” Mal says, because it’s true, and she has to defend her honor. “And look better while doing it.”

“I’ll have to look good enough for the both of us, then.”

They smile at each other, and it almost feels like things are normal between them. Like Dom could be coming at any moment to meet them there.

* * *

Arthur’s fighting has become more economical in the last year. He doesn’t bother killing the two men that come after them, just disables them quickly and efficiently. Mal recalls that he used to draw these kinds of battles out, enjoying the chase and the fight. When she comments on it, he reminds her, “We’ve got a meeting in an hour, remember?”

Of course. He was always the most punctual one out of their group. Then there are more men coming after them, so the conversation ends there.

Thank god for Robert Fischer’s love of dramatic timing. The black limo pulls in front of them. “Do you need a lift?” he asks, opening the door.

They jump in, and the driver takes off. Mal looks out the window to see if Cobol’s men are following them, and when she turns back, Arthur still has his gun out, sitting on his knee. He and Fischer are engaged in some kind of haughty staring contest.

“Arthur, it’s impolite to point guns at our employer.”

“Especially after they save you from armed thugs,” Fischer points out.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, holstering his gun. “But it’s not like your name was written on the door.”

“A cautious man,” Fischer says. “I like that. Are you going to introduce us, Ms. Cobb?”

She winces a little at the use of her last name, glancing at Arthur; Arthur’s face is predictably impassive, however. “Arthur, this is Robert Fischer. Robert, Arthur’s a forger.”

“Better than your last one, I hope,” Fischer says, offering his hand.

Arthur raises an eyebrow at Mal, then leans forward to shake Fischer’s hand. “It’s a pleasure,” he says, in a bland tone that usually signifies how much sarcasm he’d use if he could.

“What are you doing in France, Mr. Fischer?” Mal asks.

“Protecting my investment,” he says, rather patronizingly.

Mal smiles thinly. She’s thankful for the lift, but could do without a meddlesome client. “Thank you, Mr. Fischer, it’s much appreciated. You can drop us off at--”

“You’re going to meet a chemist, correct?” he asks. “I’ll tag along, if you don’t mind.”

She does, and it probably shows in her face. She’s suspicious of how solicitous he’s being. “Not at all,” she says, however.

The three of them pass the rest of the ride in silence.


	4. Chapter 4

The chemist is a sallow, shrunken man with graying hair, prematurely old, wizened like an apple left in the sun. He moves around his decrepit shop like the ghost, talking in a hoarse whisper. He wears an old, pilled cardigan that smells like mothballs and stale cigarette smoke. Even as Arthur’s judging this chemist and finding him very much wanting, he’s filing away these small details for future forgeries. It’s second nature, by now.

Lafievre is expounding on the old golden age of dreamsharing – strange, considering that the technology was only perfected in the last decade – to Robert Fischer, who seems particularly ill-at-ease. Arthur had smiled a little, when Mal introduced Fischer as a new patron of the dreamsharing business, offering him up as an audience for Lafievre’s interminable monologuing.

“Your father recommended him?” Arthur asks Mal in an undertone.

“This was the address he gave me,” she replies. “I don’t think--”

“Would you like to see the dream den?” Monsieur Lafievre asks suddenly, interrupting her.

Arthur opens his mouth to make an excuse and leave, but Mal beats him to it. “Yes, thank you.”

“Ah, _bon_. This way,” he says, wandering away.

“We need someone who can go into the field with us,” Arthur whispers to Mal. “He can barely stand on his own two feet.”

“There’s a reason my father gave me this address. That man isn’t it.”

There’s a lot that Arthur could say to that, but he’s agreed to work for Mal, for better or worse. If the worst he has to do is spend another ten minutes with this ghost-of-dreamsharing’s-past, he’ll count himself extremely lucky.

The dream den, to his surprise, is vastly different than the shop. It’s clean, well-lit, and airy. Arthur quickly counts the bodies on the low cots; eighteen people, breathing deeply and peacefully together. Wires connect each of them to a PASIV in the center of the room. A young, dark-haired woman is sitting at a desk in the back corner, jotting down notes in a lab book.

“Ah, that’s my apprentice, Ariadne,” Lafievre says. “This is mostly her realm. I let her tinker with the formulas, test them on the dreamers.” He waves dismissively. “It’s pathetic, really, but the money they bring in funds my own personal research.”

“Do they come often?” Fischer asks, looking around the room.

“Most of them, I think, come every day,” Lafievre says.

“They come here every day, just to dream?”

“No,” the young woman says, not looking up from her notebook. “They come to be woken up.”

“Yes,” Lafievre says. “The dream has become their reality. Like I said, it’s sad, but that’s business.”

By the look on her face, Ariadne doesn’t agree. Arthur shares a glance with she, and Mal moves forward to talk to the young woman.

“How long are they in the dream for?” Mal asks.

“Three hours asleep, for about thirty hours in the dream. The dilation is at just under 1000%.”

“Side effects?”

“Disrupted REM cycle, obviously. Dry mouth in about 12% of the dreamers. I’ve been using this particular formula for a month, and there's been no severe side effects.”

“Yes, she’s quit clever, my Ariadne,” Lafievre pipes up from the doorway.

Ariadne can’t quite disguise the look of annoyance that crosses her features. Arthur almost laughs. He can remember a time when he seemed too young for anyone to take seriously, and how much he hated it.

“Have you ever been into the field, Ariadne?” Mal asks, smiling.

Ariadne shakes her head. Arthur recognizes the look of someone else falling under Mal’s spell.

Mal says, “Would you like to?”

* * *

His mobile rings, and Eames is half-relieved and half-annoyed to see that it’s Parisian number calling. He settles himself into his seat at the cafe before answering. “Four days, Mal, I’d started to fear that Interpol finally tracked you down.”

“They couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and an instruction brief,” a decidedly male voice answers. “Cobol’s a bit better, but not much.”

Eames smiles, leaning back in his chair. “Arthur. As I live and breathe-”

“Can it, Mr. Eames,” Arthur says, cutting him off.

“‘Can it?’ You sound like you’ve been watching too much Bogart and Cagney. Have you been bored in Paris?”

Arthur breathes steadily through his nose for a moment, the sound of his breath crackling in the phone’s speaker. Almost all the forgers Eames has met have control issues, and as the best forger out there, Arthur is practically a textbook case. Eames has always considered it his duty to try and shake him up.

“I want you to tell me about this job, Eames,” Arthur says calmly, proving Eames’ point entirely.

“So she's brought you on?” Eames says. “I’m not surprised that she tried, but I’m surprised that you agreed.”

“We’ve... worked out our issues,” Arthur says vaguely.

Eames snorts. “Yes, because that is what you and Mal both excel at: working out your issues.”

“She killed my best friend, Eames,” Arthur says in a low, cold voice. “I’d say I’m doing pretty well.”

Eames wishes they weren’t having this conversation over the phone; he can’t read Arthur’s tone like he could if they were face to face. (He may not be a forger, he may not understand the physical language of bodies as fluently as Arthur, but Eames has spent years learning the subtle shifts of Arthur’s shoulders, face, and hands.) "Arthur--"

“You don’t have to worry about gunfights breaking out between us, at least,” Arthur says, interrupting him. After a moment, he amends, “Not in meatspace, anyway.”

Eames’ mouth quirks up. “There are much better ways to resolve conflict, you know. Naked mud wrestling, for example. I’d volunteer to referee.”

Arthur actually laughs at that. Eames has missed that sound.

“Tell me about this job,” Arthur says. “Actually, tell me about Mal. Is she capable of doing this?”

“She’s certainly got the motivation to try,” Eames says, hedging.

“Eames,” Arthur says. “Everything I’ve ever read has told me that inception’s an impossible game.”

“Then why did you agree to this job?” Eames asks. When Arthur doesn’t answer, Eames does it for him. “Because if anybody could do it, it would be Mal, right? Before she and Dom lost their marbles, they were so far ahead of the curve, they made the rest of us look like apes grubbing in the dirt.”

“Speak for yourself,” Arthur says.

“I’d hardly dare to speak for you, darling,” Eames replies, and doesn’t add _I don’t have that right, remember?_ “But you asked me for my opinion, and there it is. I think it can be done.”

“And Mal?”

“Still brilliant, underneath the layers of crazy. Possibly even more brilliant because of them.”

“Is she... Is Dom still showing up?”

If this were anybody else, Eames would lie through his teeth for Mal. Arthur, however, deserves to know the truth.

Also, Arthur would kill Eames when he inevitably found out.

“Yes," Eames says. “She says she’s trying to make it stop, but you know how it is.”

“Not really,” Arthur replies. There’s an undercurrent of anger there.

"Course not,” Eames says, letting some of his own resentment bleed into his voice. “Why would you? All the way off in Paris. How has it been there, these last few months?”

Arthur sighs audibly. "Honestly? Boring. Especially without you to keep me on my toes."

Eames can just imagine him, standing in some doorway on a Parisian street, pinching the bridge of his nose, keeping an eye out for Mal, and takes a bit of pity on him.

“We’ve evolved a method for dealing with him,” Eames says. “He’s not James Bond, and he’s not even as clever as Dom actually was.”

Silence on the other line.

“Don’t read too much into Mal’s projection, Arthur. Really.”

“It’s hard to be objective when the last time we shared a dream, her _projection_ shot me in the gut and let me bleed out.”

Eames bites his bottom lip. The projection of Dom had gone after Arthur with a violence that he usually, in Eames’ experience, reserved only for Mal. It had been a tipping point for Arthur; his and Mal’s falling out had involved a lot of screaming accusations and subsequent gunfire. Eames -- in a choice he’s not sure he regrets -- had gone after Mal, because he knew she was the more likely of the two to fall apart.

“I know,” Eames says, and lets the words hang in space. After a moment, he asks, “Has she got a chemist yet?”

“I think so. She’s testing the product right now.”

Eames blinks. He’s not sure if that bodes good or ill, that Mal has decided to start going under alone again. “Tell her to call me when she wakes up, all right?”

“All right,” he says, then sighs heavily again. “I’ll see you in Hong Kong, I guess.”

“Don’t sound so thrilled, Arthur,” Eames says. “I might get the wrong idea.”


	5. Chapter 5

**You’re waiting for a train.**

There’s a shriek, a rumbling bellow, and blue eyes staring earnestly into hers–

 **A train that will take you–**

The curtain billows, spilling moonlight across the wooden floors, a man’s hand.

 **–far away. You know where you hope–**

“I’m trying to save you,” Dom says, pleading with her, begging her with the weight of all of their love, the years they’ve been together. “Please, Mal–”

The gun is in her hand. Her finger is on the trigger. She feels so incredibly weak, fighting against gravity.

 **–this train is going but–**

The rumbling in her ears gets louder. Dom’s eyes–

 **–you can’t know for sure.**

Dom’s eyes search her out. The gun is in Dom’s hand. The gun is in her hand.

She shrieks. The gun goes off.

 **You can never know for sure.**

 

Mal wakes up.

“It’s sharp, yeah?” Ariadne says, then looks closer. “Are you okay?”

Mal rolls over, fighting vertigo. She takes a measured breath.

“Are you feeling nauseous?” Ariadne asks. She puts a cool hand on Mal’s wrist, feeling for a pulse.

“I’m fine,” Mal says weakly, then clears her throat. “I’m fine,” she says again, in a stronger tone.

“Your pulse is higher than it should be–”

“I’ll be fine. You were right. It is sharp. You’re better than I could have hoped.”

Ariadne half-smiles at the flattery. Mal pushes herself off the bed.

“Where are the toilets?” she asks, trying for casual.

“This way,” Ariadne says, standing. Mal wants to snap at the girl, tell her she doesn’t need a damn chaperone to piss, but no. That would be impolite. Mal stands as gracefully as she can and follows Ariadne out, avoiding Robert’s curious glance. Arthur is in the hallway, tucking something – his phone, maybe? – back into the inner pocket of his jacket. He gives her a questioning look as they walk by, and Mal answers it with a vague nod.

“Through there,” Ariadne says, pointing to the door. Mal pushes past her, locks the door behind her, and runs the tap to disguise the sound of her gasping breath, tearing into and out of her lungs. She looks at the watch on her wrist (it was Dom’s, it’s too big for her wrist, but it had been his totem, she couldn't leave it behind).

Two minutes. That’s all the time she’ll allot to herself for this... attack, episode, whatever.

She counts along with the seconds ticking by, willing her breath to steady itself and her pulse to slow down. The sudden knock on the door makes her jump. She takes one last deep breath, splashes some water on her face, and unlocks the door.

Ariadne nudges the door open. “Are you all right, Ms. Cobb?”

Mal pulls it the rest of the way open. “I’m fine. And please, call me Mal.”

Ariadne smiles, a trifle nervously, as Mal begins to wash her hands.

( _Fake it til you make it,_ Dom says inside her head. How he had loved to tease her with those stupid American cliches, back when they were first dating. )

“I can tinker with the formula if you’re feeling any aftereffects,” Ariadne begins.

Mal waves this off. “I really am all right. It was just a bit more intense than I’m used to. Apparently, I’ve been working with an inferior product.”

That makes Ariadne grin. “I synthesize all of the compounds myself.”

“So Monsieur Lafievre told us. You’re quite brilliant.”

Ariadne’s grin turns lopsided. “I doubt he put it like that.”

Mal shrugs. “Of course not. He couldn’t see brilliance if it exploded in his face. I know better. Will you work for me?”

Ariadne swallows. “What exactly do you need?”

Mal turns to the mirror. “Great depth.”

“Two levels? A dream within a dream?”

“Deeper,” Mal says, eyes stuck on her reflection.

“Three levels,” Ariadne says. “That would be too unstable. If there was a tremor in reality, the dream would collapse–”

“You need to add a sedative,” Mal says.

“That's--”

“I’ve done it before. It’s perfectly possible.”

Ariadne looks thoughtful, nodding to herself. “I was going to say dangerous.”

Mal faces her. “This job may not be as safe as working for a dinosaur like Lafievre, but it should be considerably more interesting. Pay better too, I expect,” she adds, with a glance at Ariadne’s worn corduroys and scuffed shoes.

Mal expects her to walk away. Ariadne shifts on her feet, but doesn’t leave. “How many people are going under?”

“Six, including yourself and the mark. All hands on deck for this voyage,” she says wryly.

“Seven,” says a voice from the doorway.

Mal whirls around. “Mr. Fischer.”

He’s standing in the door to the ladies’ toilets, regarding Mal coolly. “I’ll be accompanying you in the dream. How else will I know you’ve succeeded?”

Mal holds his eyes for a moment, considers challenging him. Then she shrugs. “Seven it is, then. Ariadne?"

Ariadne looks from Mal to Fischer, then back to Mal. “All right.”

 _Lucky number,_ Dom murmurs from her memories.

* * *

The next morning, the high of telling off Lafievre still hasn’t worn off. Ariadne wakes up grinning. It’s the same feeling she used to get on the morning of her birthday; the desire to stay in bed a little bit longer, luxuriating in the anticipation.

No such luck, of course. Her phone rings, and she stumbles out of bed to fish it out of her bag. “Hello?” she says, a little blearily.

“Morning, Ariadne. It’s Arthur.”

It takes a moment to remember who Arthur is; he’d been quiet in the lab yesterday, letting Mal and Mr. Fischer do most of the talking. “Arthur, hi.”

“Listen, I know we have a few hours before our flight, but I was wondering if you wanted to get breakfast.”

“I guess so. Sure.” Ariadne pauses. “Just the two of us?”

“Yeah. Mal’s still wrapping up a few loose ends.”

“Oh,” Ariadne says, slightly disappointed. “Where should I meet you?”

“I’m just downstairs, actually.”

Ariadne blinks.

“Sorry, is that weird?” he asks.

A little, she thinks. “No, no.”

“It just seemed easier than trying to coordinate a meeting.”

“Sure,” she says. Should she bring her mace? Better safe than sorry, she figures. “I’ll be downstairs in a minute.”

“Hi,” Arthur says apologetically, when she sees him. Outside, in the brightness of the daylight, he seems younger, more awkward. She’s not sure why she got so paranoid.

“Morning,” she says, shutting the door behind her and sticking her hands in her pockets. “There’s a cafe around the corner. They’ve got great croques."

“Great,” he says. “Sorry for dropping in like this, really.”

“It’s fine,” she says. “Really.”

There’s a very awkward silence as they start walking.

“So,” Ariadne says. “Are you Mal’s pointman?”

Arthur laughs, but without much humor. “No. That’s Eames, you’ll meet him in Hong Kong.”

“Oh. Are you an architect?”

Arthur shakes his head. “I’m not bad at it, but Mal hired me as a forger."

“A what?”

Arthur looks over at her. “A forger?” At Ariadne’s shrug, he says, “I guess you wouldn’t really know about this aspect of dream-sharing.”

Ariadne feels slightly defensive, and covers it with self-deprecation. “I’m just a glorified drug-pusher. There's plenty I don’t know.”

Arthur looks chagrined. “I just meant that you’ve been doing legal dreamshare work.”

“Generally speaking,” Ariadne says, because dream dens operate in the shady gray areas of the law. Most governments, including France’s, don’t have any regulations regarding them yet.

“Well, generally speaking, forgery in dreams is just as illegal as forgery in reality. If Lafievre was trying to stay legit, he would have kept pretty far away from people like me.”

Ariadne looks at Arthur from the corner of her eye. “Okay, so what does a forger do in a dream?”

“Have you ever had a dream where you were somebody else?”

Ariadne blinks, suddenly reminded of a recurring childhood dream in which she was Aang from _Avatar: The Last Airbender._ She coughs. “Yeah, hasn’t everyone?”

“You’d be surprised,” Arthur says. They’re at the cafe; he holds the door open for her. “Anyway, forgers can become other people in a dream.”

“You mean, you can change your appearance?” she asks, walking into the cafe. Arthur ushers her into one of the booths on the far wall, near the kitchen.

“It’s deeper than that,” Arthur says. “I can be anyone. A mark’s grandmother. A hobo on the street. A kid walking home from school.”

Ariadne looks at the other man, trying to imagine him transforming into a Parisian schoolboy in a uniform. It's a very odd picture.

“How does it work?”

Arthur looks up at the ceiling of the cafe, thinking. “A combination of exhaustive research, observation, and improvisation. And a little bit of internalized chaos, to help you slip out of your skin.”

That doesn’t really make sense to her, but she shrugs it off. “So, it’s like method acting?”

He smiles wryly. “More like prostitution. Fulfilling someone else’s desires or expectations, or just blending into the background.”

Ariadne smiles. She likes Arthur, she decides. He’s sort of weird, but then, so is she. She supposes you have to be weird to really want to work in this business. “I can see how that would come in handy. Get you in close to a dreamer without arousing suspicion.”

He smirks. “I once forged Mal well enough to trick her husband.”

“Mal’s married?” Ariadne asks.

Arthur’s face twists a bit. He swallows, and the says lightly, “You said the croques are good?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, as Arthur signals the server, wondering what the hell just happened.

They order, and silence reigns over the table again. After the server brings them their coffees, Ariadne asks, “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, of course not,” Arthur says. He twists his coffee cup around in its saucer. "Your question caught me off guard, is all.”

“Were you and Mal... together?”

“No, god no, not like that.” Arthur looks away from her, towards the door. “Mal and her husband, the two of them were the first people I worked with in this business.”

“What happened?”

“He died. It’s a long story,” Arthur says evasively. “And I’m not the best person to tell it.”

“Why?” Ariadne asks. She knows she shouldn’t, but she’s been damnably curious all of her life, and while it hasn't always served her well, she’s not planning on stopping any time soon.

After a moment of silence, Arthur sets his coffee cup back down, and leans forward. “Look, the reason I invited you out was to say, I know what it’s like to be young and constantly underestimated. And I know how it feels to finally have someone recognize your abilities. Mal’s always been good at that; finding talented people, pushing them to be better. The best.”

“All right,” she says.

"But you can’t trust her,” he says urgently. “I’m not trying to be patronizing or tell you you’re in over your head. But something happened to her and Dom, and after they were--” Arthur cuts himself off.

“What?”

Arthur takes a sip of his coffee, visibly reigning himself back in. “Something’s wrong with Mal. She’s got a shade. Do you know what that is?”

“It’s a persistent projection. Follows a dreamer around.” She’d seen them before, with the lotus-eaters, as Lafievre called them. “They’re mostly harmless.”

“Yeah, mostly,” he scoffs. His expression is dark.

“Should I be worried?” Ariadne asks, feeling slightly ill. She should have known that this job was too good to be true.

Arthur looks at her. “You should be on your guard,” he says. Then he half-smiles. “That's true of most jobs you’re ever going to have though. Especially on this side of the law.”

Ariadne takes a bracing sip of her coffee, burning the roof of her mouth. “This is the deep end of the pool, I guess,” she muses.

“Get ready to jump in headfirst,” Arthur says, agreeing.


	6. Chapter 6

“I still can’t believe I agreed to take this job,” Yusuf says, sitting down next to Eames in the airport bar. “After what happened last time.”

“Hello, Yusuf. Nice to see you, too,” Eames says. “And you should see what happened to the last guy we worked with. Of course, he was a useless twat, and you’re not.”

Yusuf orders two Tsingtaos, and ignores Eames for a moment in favor of watching the waitress’s ass as she walks away. “Mal reminds me of one of those insects that eat their mates after breeding with them. You know the one I mean?”

“I know that you’ve watched entirely too many Hitchcock films," Eames points out.

“She’s more Fritz Lang than Hitchcock,” Yusuf says. “I’m not sure I admire you for being able to stick with her for this long, or place bets on when she’ll bite off your head.”

“I’m not sleeping with her, so it’s a moot point.”

“Are you still pining for that guy? Arthur?”

“The fuck? Who brought up–”

“Do you have a thing for unstable people? He’s a crazy bastard. Why do you carry such a torch for him?”

 _Because I am also a crazy bastard,_ Eames thinks. He really does have a terrible weakness for half-mad brunettes. It’s a documented fact. “Fuck off, Yusuf. It’s not a torch.”

“It’s an Olympic torch, nothing has managed to extinguish its flame. You've been after him for years.”

The waitress brings their beers over, and Eames drinks his straight from the bottle, bypassing the glass she’s put down. Yusuf smiles at her and thanks her in Mandarin.

“You know they generally speak Cantonese in Hong Kong, right?”

“Of course, I don’t even understand how you can be attracted to men at all,” Yusuf says, ignoring him completely. “I mean, look at us,” He gestures at the two of them. “Look at these bodies, look at the way we carry ourselves. What do we even have to offer anyone who would make the mistake of wanting us? Men are horrible, disgusting creatures.”

“You just got dumped, didn’t you?” Eames says.

“Malika left me last month for an Australian,” Yusuf replies glumly. “A blonde surfer with the IQ of a cane toad. I nearly shot myself in shame.”

“Jesus, you sad sack of shit. Why am I even friends with you?” But he’s laughing, harder than he has in a long time, rather belying the point he’s trying to make.

“Because your life is just as terrible as mine, if not worse. You’re the pointman for a madwoman who killed her husband, and you're in love with said dead husband’s best friend. You had to pay me a _disgusting_ of money just to agree to work with you again. And you are contracted to a man who, from what you’ve told me, is training to become a comic book supervillain. And if that weren’t enough, you’ve agreed to do an impossible job.”

“It’s not impossible,” Eames says. “Just difficult.”

“Notice that _that_ is the only point you’re arguing. You are fucked, mate. Cheers,” Yusuf says, toasting him.

Eames toasts him back. “Live the life you love, love the life you live. Isn’t that how the platitude goes?”

“I wouldn’t know, praise Allah. That sounds like terrible advice.”

“Why are we still talking about love?” Eames asks, only half rhetorically. He’s well on his way to getting tipsy, which could be bad considering that the rest of the team should be arriving within the hour.

“Indeed. Let’s talk about something that doesn’t make us both want to die. Like sex trafficking or shitty football leagues. Anything.”

Laughing into his beer, Eames has a silent moment of gratitude, thankful that Yusuf agreed to work with him. Aside from the fact that he’s one of the best architects in the business, he never fails to inject some much-needed sanity into Eames’ life.

* * *

The first time Eames sees Arthur in six months, it’s as he’s walking out of arrivals with Mal and their new chemist. Eames takes note of her briefly – tiny, dark-haired, and looking exhausted and excited at the same time – before letting his eyes linger over Arthur.

He looks slightly rumpled: hair the tiniest bit mussed, shirt wrinkled, tie askew. He is definitely on the skinnier side of healthy. All of his softer edges have been sharpened, become hawk-like.

All things considered, he’s still vilely attractive.

“Olympic torch,” Yusuf murmurs from beside him.

“Piss off,” Eames mutters, right before the three come into earshot. Eames kisses Mal’s hand, because they both enjoy it when he pretends to be gallant. “Mal, ma cher.”

“Eames. I hope you’ve been busy.”

“As an incredibly busy bee. And this is the chemist you rescued from Lafievre? God, love, do your parents know where you are?” Eames says. He grins down at the girl. “I’m Eames, I’ll be working point.”

“Ariadne,” she says, shaking his hand. “And I’m twenty-five, so please don’t patronize me. I had enough of that from Lafievre,” she says, cheeky as you please. Eames likes her already.

“Apologies, Ariadne. You just caught an old man off his guard,” Eames says, kissing her hand as well, while Mal snorts a laugh.

When he turns to Arthur, the forger is raising an eyebrow at him. “Arthur,” Eames purrs. “You look lovely as always.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Arthur replies, casting an eye at Eames’ clothes.

“Ah, the war of attrition over my clothes. How I’ve missed it,” Eames says, smiling. He holds his hand out, a challenge or maybe a dare.

Arthur considers Eames’ hand for a moment, then says, “Kiss my hand and I’ll shoot you.”

His grip is slightly sweaty in Eames’. The man’s not quite as collected as he seems. Eames leans forward, with bravery borne from three beers and Yusuf’s disapproval, and says softly, “Bang bang.”

Arthur’s nostrils flare, like a bull considering whether or not to charge the red flag. Eames smiles, happy to be reaquainting himself with all of Arthur’s little tells.

Yusuf clears his throat loudly, so he releases Arthur’s hand and steps aside. “Arthur, Ariadne, this is Yusuf, our architect.”

There’s another few minutes of pleasantries before they all head towards the taxi line. Eames pushes himself and Mal into one cab and the rest of the team into another, needing to have a wee chat with Mal away from the rest of the group.

“I would have thought you’d wanted to share a cab with Arthur. The way you were flirting with him--”

“We’ve got a bit of catching up ourselves, Mrs. Cobb," Eames says, unwilling to admit that the idea of being stuck in a close space with Arthur terrifies him. "Like, when the hell did you agree to let Fischer come down there with us?”

“Ah. I meant to tell you–-”

 _“No bloody tourists,_ Mal. Didn’t we agree?”

“Do you want to tell him? Because I already tried.”

Eames rubs at his eyes, trying to fend off a headache. “This job is already going pear-shaped,” he mutters.

“Are you regretting not running off to Madrid with Kobayashi yet?” Mal asks.

“Mostly, I’m regretting that third beer I had at lunch. Was I really that flirtatious with Arthur? Fuck, I’ve developed a deathwish, working with you.”

“How is it that your deathwish is my fault?”

“Nobody can spend more than a minute with you without becoming the worst kind of romantic.”

 _“Peu m'importent les problèmes-”_ Mal sings softly.

“Quit it,” Eames warns.

 _“Mon amour, puisque tu m'aimes._ I wish you the best, Mr. Eames.”

Eames thinks then that he should have stuck with his original life plan of becoming a porn star and tattoo artist. It would have been more dignified than this.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning finds them on the bottom floor of an empty, worn-down hotel in Kennedy Town, newly bought by a Fischer-Morrow subsidiary.

“Not a bad investment, I guess,” Fischer says, surveying the spacious, musty rooms. "This area is due for a boom.”

Mal hands him a folder containing all the information that Eames managed to gather in five days. “We’re your real investment, Mr. Fischer. Don’t forget.”

He smiles at her. “Never."

“Gather ‘round, children,” Eames calls, smiling when they do. “Right. So the mark is Yoshirou Saito. Forty-seven years old, the CEO of Proclus Global. One of the big players in the energy game. Second biggest, as it happens.”

Next to her, Fischer shifts slightly in his chair.

“What we need to do is plant an idea in his subconscious.” With proper dramatic timing, he adds, “To dissolve his own empire.”

“Which goes completely against everything he stands for,” Arthur interjects.

“That’s why we have to go deep,” Mal says.

“How deep are we talking about, by the way?” Yusuf asks.

“Three levels,” Mal says.

“What? That’s-”

“It’s possible,” Mal says. “That’s not our concern at the moment.”

“Yeah. Our concern is convincing a businessman to do the worst thing possible for his business, for no reason,” Arthur says.

“The subconscious doesn’t deal in reason,” Mal points out. “It deals in desires, fears, visceral emotions.”

Arthur leans back in his chair. "So we translate a business strategy into an emotional concept.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” Arthur says, setting his chair back on all four feet. “How?”

Mal looked back to Eames. “What do we know about him?”

Eames sighs. “Not a whole lot. He works about fifty hours a week. He’s physically fit, meditates, travels frequently. He’s not married. He’s a private man; he works pretty hard to stay out of the public eye.”

“What’s his history like?”

“Interesting, to say the least. His father disappeared when Saito was eight years old. The family’s official story is that he died while hiking near Mount Fuji, even hinted it was a suicide.”

“Why would they do that?” Ariadne asks.

“Preferable to the truth, which was that he ran away to Hawaii and started another family.”

“Interesting,” Mal says. “Did Saito ever talk to him?”

“No,” Eames says. “The elder Saito died three years ago.”

“What else did you find?” Mal asks.

“After the father ran off, Saito and his mum went to live with her parents. Grandpa was the founder of Proclus Global. Saito was a typical overachiever kid, honors student and active in the kendo club. Then when he got into university, he attempted suicide.”

“Really?” Fischer asks, leaning forward.

“Really,” Eames replies, sounding nonplussed at the interruption. “Some Dutch hikers found him in the Aokigahara forest, vomiting his guts out from an overdose. His family kept that one under wraps too. Four years later, his grandfather died, and Saito inherited the company.”

“That’s three events,” Mal says, “that changed his life, bringing him to where he is now. We’ll be starting with those, shaping the dream around them. We’ll need more, though.”

“Does he have any kind of confidante?" Arthur asks. “Anyone he’s close with at all?”

“He has a mistress,” Fischer says suddenly.

All eyes turn to the businessman.

Fischer shrugs. “So I hear. My aunt lives and breathes gossip.”

“You heard right,” Eames says. “And I was about to get to that.”

Mal hides a smile as Eames mutters something about billionaires stealing his thunder. “Mr. Eames?” she prompts.

“N. Balakumaran Aruna. She’s a married politician in India. She and Saito-san hit it off at some conference on renewable energy in developing countries. They see each other every few months, have a love nest in Chennai.”

“Can you get to her?” Mal asks.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Eames says, shrugging.

“Get tickets out to Chennai. I want to see if you can pry any of his secrets out of her. We need to know more about Saito, find some leverage. Yusuf will go with you, to get the layout of the ‘love nest’ you mentioned.”

“Do you think he’s actually opened up to her?” Arthur asks.

“You’re going to find out,” Mal says.

Arthur blinks. “I am?”

Mal nods. “I want you with Eames. We might need you to forge her in the dream. Why waste an opportunity?”

Mal is aware of Eames’ eyes, boring into her with all the subtlety of an electric drill. “Why indeed?” he says.

Mal smiles at him. “You have a week. Check in with me nightly.”

Eames smiles thinly. "Aye-aye, captain.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Do you remember when I asked you to marry me?” Dom says. His voice rumbles on her skin, vibrations moving through blood and bone.

“Like it was yesterday,” Mal answers. She winds a hand into his hair and tugs him down into a kiss. "You were so nervous. You spilled your wine all over your pants, and I was utterly charmed.”

“Yes, I’ll admit that I’m a fool for you,” Dom sings, terribly off-key.

Mal slaps his arm where it’s wound around her chest. “Don’t sing,” she says, smiling. “You’re terrible.”

The sun is setting over the ocean; the sea breeze stirs the curtains beside them on the balcony, lifts Mal’s hair from her shoulders. Dom touches her jaw, pulls her into another kiss.

"Do you remember what I said? After I spilled the wine?”

Mal’s breath catches. “That you dreamed of growing old with me.”

“It’s not too late, Mal.”

Clouds cover the sun. The warm breeze turns cold.

“Dom-”

“I’m trying to save you, Mal, please.”

His hand closes around her throat, cutting off her air.

“Our children are waiting,” he says. “I’m waiting. You just have to wake up-”

 _Dom,_ she tries to say. _Dom, no._ Spots appear in her vision.

“I love you so m-”

There’s a blur, a thud, and then the weight of Dom’s hands are gone from her throat. Air burns in her lungs.

“What the hell was that?” Ariadne shouts, still clutching the candle stick she used to knock Dom out.

“What are you doing?” Mal chokes out, coughing painfully. She tries to stand and nearly falls on her face. Ariadne catches her around the waist and hauls her back up, surprisingly strong for her tiny frame.

“What are _you_ doing? You shouldn’t even be going under without someone watching your vitals-”

Mal shoves her away. “This is none of your business.”

“Like hell, it’s not,” Ariadne says. “I’m going to be opening my mind to you, and you’ve got a fucking boogeyman buried in your subconscious.”

They both fall silent as a whistling shriek cuts through the air.

“What is that?” Ariadne says.

There’s a familiar, sickening rumble in the fair.

“It’s a train,” Mal says. She looks down. Dom is stirring on the floor.

“What?”

Mal pulls a gun out of her pocket.

“Wait-” Ariadne says.

Mal shoots her between the eyes, and Ariadne crumples to the floor. She looks down at Dom, who is beginning to move weakly. His hand brushes against her ankle. “Au revoir,” she says, then turns the gun on herself.

Ariadne is sitting across from her when she wakes, anger writ large across her face.

“Who is he?” Ariadne asks.

Mal pulls the IV out of her wrist, then massages it, pointedly ignoring her.

“If this was just some kind of -- god, I don’t know -- kinky roleplaying thing--”

“Piss off," Mal hisses.

“Look, I dealt with lotus-eaters on a daily basis with Lafievre, I’m not judging,” she says, holding up her hands.

“‘Lotus-eaters?’” Mal says.

Ariadne looks away. “Sounds nicer than ‘dream junkie.’ All I’m saying is, I won’t judge. I just want to know what I’m in for.”

Mal rubs her temples. “This is personal. It's nothing you have to worry about.”

“That’s not what Arthur said.”

Mal stares at her. _“What?"_

Ariadne blinks, suddenly nervous. “I talked to him before we left Paris. He wanted to warn me -- He just said that--”

“What? What did he say?"

“That you had a problem with a persistent projection. A shade.”

Mal collapses back in her chair. She thought she’d made some kind of progress with Arthur, reached something of a truce. Apparently not.

“I’m sorry,” Ariadne says. “I know I shouldn’t intrude, but with the lotus-eaters, sometimes I could--”

“Help them?” Mal asks, with hollow humor.

Ariadne swallows, refusing to look away. “Try, anyway.”

Mal considers the girl for a moment. “We’re remarkably alike, in some ways," she says. "Stubborn. Determined. More curious than is probably healthy. I think I know why my father sent me to you.”

“Besides rescuing me from Lafievre, the fossil?”

Mal smiles thinly. “That man in my dream. His name is Dom. He was my husband.”

Ariadne’s eyes are huge. “Was?” she asks.

“He died. The police believe I killed him. It’s why I can’t go back to the States.”

Ariadne is silent, looking at her hands.

“You’re not going to ask if I did it?” Mal asks.

Ariadne looks up. “Did you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except... here. I’ll show you.”

Mal pulls out a new IV tube from the PASIV. Ariadne watches her, obviously apprehensive.

“Do you trust me?” Mal asks, holding it out to her.

The girl obviously doesn’t, but she picks up the needle anyway.

* * *

Ariadne opens her eyes in an elevator; there’s old wood paneling, a worn carpet, soft strains of a piano coming out of a brass speaker above the door.

The elevator is going down. An arrow slowly descends the floors, sliding past 4, 3, 2, and then stopping on the number 1. There’s a bell, and then the door opens. Ariadne looks at the arrow again: there’s one floor below this, the basement.

The doors open into a hallway. The first thing Ariadne hears is Mal’s voice, speaking in its soft accent. _“The children took each other by the hand, kissed the roses, and rejoiced in the sunshine. What a lovely summer day it was, beautiful and golden, and it never seemed to end.”_

Ariadne is in a cheerful, brightly-lit house, in a hallway decorated with art prints. The windows open onto views of a large garden and tall trees. It's lovely, but somehow impersonal.

 _“But then, as Kai and Gerda were walking home, Kai said, ‘Oh! Something has struck my heart, and I have got something in my eye.’ The little girl peered into his eye, but could see nothing.”_

Ariadne walks forward, following the sound of Mal’s voice.

 _“‘It must be gone,’ she said. But it was not. Grains of the demon’s mirror had fallen onto the little boy. One had struck his heart, and the other was stuck in his eye. Poor Kai! Soon his heart would be a lump of ice. It had already begun to freeze...”_

“Mal?” Ariadne says. She rounds a corner and comes into a spare bedroom. Mal is sitting in an overstuffed sofa, with two young children curled up on either side of her.

“Shh,” Mal says, holding a finger to her lips. “Don't wake them.”

Mal puts the book down -- _Hans Christian Anderson_ , Ariadne notes -- and extricates herself carefully, gently, without waking either child.

"Where are we?” Ariadne whispers.

“A rented house in Palo Alto. I couldn't go back home after what happened.”

“So, this is a memory. Where's Dom?” Ariadne asks, looking around.

“He's already dead.”

“Are those...”

Mal smooths a hand down the girl’s blonde hair. “Our children. Phillipa and James.”

Mal walks toward her, and Ariadne realizes how haggard the other woman looks: hair lank and unwashed, bruises under her eyes, nails chewed to the quick. She ushers Ariadne out into the kitchen, and shuts the French doors behind her.

“Why am I here?” Ariadne asks.

“To see me make the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Mrs. Cobb,” a man suddenly says from behind her, making Ariadne jump. He is thin and serious-looking. He’s holding out a boarding pass. “This is your only chance. It’s now or never.”

Mal takes the boarding pass in her hand. “This is the moment I decided to run. Everyone thinks I murdered Dom in cold blood, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m arrested.”

Mal walks backwards, a dazed look on her face. “And I realize, I need to say goodbye. To Phillipa and James, or they’ll never forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Her hand reaches for the doorknob... and stops.

Ariadne starts edging towards the hallway again.

“Then I think, what can I say to them? How will I ever make them understand? How will I be able to walk away from them?”

Mal’s hand falls back to her side. Ariadne takes a few steps back towards the hall, towards the elevator doors.

“Better... _easier_ if I just let them sleep.”

Ariadne runs while she’s still distracted.

The doors slide shut behind her, and she presses the button that says B: basement level The elevator starts to move, and Ariadne tries to shut up the small voice telling her that she’s doing something incredibly wrong.

The bell rings, and the doors open.

It’s a different hallway, a different house; this one is cold, foreboding, too quiet. There’s a breeze coming in from the open window, moonlight filling the living room with impossible blue hues.

Ariadne steps into the living room, looking around. A floorboard squeaks under her foot.

“Shh,” a voice says. Ariadne whirls around. Mal’s husband -- Dom -- is standing in the doorway. “Don’t wake them,” he says.

“Who?” Ariadne says, feeling panic start to prickle her skin.

“The kids. I gave them something to help them sleep, but still.” He holds his finger to his lips. “Shh.”

Ariadne backs away as he comes forward. There’s something menacing about him, the way he moves, something dangerous and predatory.

“I-- My name is--”

“I know who you are,” he says, cutting her off. “What are you doing here?” he whispers.

“I... I just wanted to understand.”

He stalks forward. She sees the dark outline of a knife, held loosely in his hand. Her insides go hot and liquid with fear.

“How could you understand?” he asks. “Do you know what it’s like to be in love? To have one person comprise your entire world?”

“Your kids--” Ariadne says.

“Don’t,” he spits, walking towards her. “I have a riddle for you. You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far, far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don’t know for sure.”

“You can never know for sure,” Mal’s voice says from behind her. Ariadne turns around in surprise, taking her eyes off Dom.

Mal grabs Ariadne and shoves her behind her.

“But it doesn’t matter,” Dom says. Looking over Mal’s shoulder, Ariadne realizes that the knife is dark, shining wetly with blood. “Why doesn’t it matter, Mal?”

Mal swallows. She starts pushing Ariadne back down the hall, towards the elevator. “Because you’ll be together,” she says.

“And we will be together,” Dom says, shifting the knife in his hand.

Mal shoves Ariadne, and they sprint back to the elevator.

 _Don’t look back,_ Ariadne thinks. _Oh god don’t look back, he might be gaining._

The elevator has changed by the time they reach it: a grill instead of the mirrored doors, which Ariadne finds herself grateful for when Mal slams it shut behind them. Dom slams into the cage a second after she locks it, beating against the grill like an animal.

“Come back, Mal!” he screams. _“I said come back here!”_

“We’ll be together soon, darling,” she says, crouched against the far end of the elevator. “I need you to wait here for me.”

He slams his fists against the bars. “You made me a promise, Mal.”

There are tears running down Mal’s cheeks. “I haven’t forgotten. It’s just for this job, and then I’ll come back.”

The elevator moves up far too slowly. Dom’s eyes follow his wife until Ariadne can’t see him anymore.

* * *

Ariadne is already awake and watching her when Mal blinks open her eyes.

“How long has this been happening?” she asks.

“Long enough,” Mal says, pulling the IV out of her wrist. She feels exhausted.

“Do the others know?”

“Obviously,” she says. “If Arthur warned you--”

Ariadne stands up, and starts putting the equipment away. “I don’t just mean the shade. Do they understand the danger here?”

“This is dangerous work, Ariadne.”

Ariadne whirls around. “As far as I can tell, the danger here is _you._ I’ve never seen a shade that, that aggressive, that violent.”

“Everyone on this team has run into Dom while working with me. Eames and I have a method for dealing with him--”

“We’re going three levels deep, Mal! That’s further down than anyone has ever been, we don’t know what kind of effects that might have, not really, and with the sedation--”

“Everyone here knows the risks,” Mal replies, leaning forward.

“We’re doing something that hasn’t been done before. This isn’t a known territory, we’re planting an idea in someone’s head--”

“It’s been done before.”

“And we don’t...” Ariadne trails off, taking in what Mal has said. “Wait, are you saying you’ve done this?”

Mal looks away. She feel nauseous. “I’m saying that it was done to me.”


	9. Chapter 9

Chennai is hot. Disgustingly hot. After the cool spring in Paris and Hong Kong’s rain, Arthur feels like he’s being cooked alive in the dusty furnace of Chennai. Just the minute-long walk from the air-conditioned cab to the air-conditioned cafe where he’s meeting Eames makes him break out in a sweat.

“How can you stand drinking tea?” he asks when he sees the steaming cup next to Eames’ hand. He sets his briefcase down and sits down next to Eames. It’s an effort not to simply collapse.

“It’s the only thing for the heat. Makes your body work to cool itself.”

“Bullshit,” Arthur says, and orders a bottle of water.

“If you say so.” Eames takes another sip. Arthur watches, in a kind of heat-induced stupor, as a drop of sweat slides down the side of his throat. There’s a tendril of a tattoo peeking out of Eames’ collar.

Eames raises his eyebrows. “Arthur?”

Arthur blinks, then yanks at his tie, loosening it. “This damn heat,” he mutters. “I feel half-catatonic.”

He doesn’t miss the way Eames’ eyebrows raise, a challenge. Arthur opens his water and drains half the bottle, ignoring him. “Are we on for tonight?” he asks.

“Barring catastrophe,” Eames replies, swallowing the last of his drink. “I’ve got the specs for Aruna’s apartment. Yusuf’s been watching it for the last few hours.”

“Poor bastard,” Arthur says, feelingly. He’s been posing as a representative from one of Fischer’s philanthropic foundations, meeting with Aruna, her husband, and various other politicians, for the last three days. Eames and Yusuf have been sharing stakeout duties.

“Save your pity,” Eames says. “There are better recipients out there.”

“Like you?” Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Exactly.” Eames leans back in his chair and fans himself. "Yusuf's used to hot weather. I’ve been running around eastern Europe with Mal for the last six months. It’s not been an easy transition.”

“I thought you liked the heat.”

"Oh, I do. This inferno goes a bit too far." He sighs, then says nostalgically, "Makes me long for the Mediterranean.”

Arthur thinks of the hot sun, the cool wind, the bright blue water. “Do you remember Palermo?” he asks.

“Of course I remember Palermo,” Eames says. “What do you think got me through this awful winter, if not memories of you sunbathing in the buff on Sicilian beaches?”

Eames’ shirt is partially unbuttoned, and it pulls to the side as he rests one of his arms over the back of his chair. Arthur takes the sight of him in, the lazy sprawl of his body, and lets himself _want_ for a terrible, aching moment.

“See something you like?” Eames asks gently, startling Arthur out of his daze.

“Eames.” A reproach. A warning.

Eames looks at him, then down at his empty teacup. “You know it was me that told Miles you were in Paris?”

Arthur smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I knew.” He doesn’t ask how Eames knew where he was. He and Eames almost always know how to find each other; they just never do.

“Just so we know where we stand.”

Arthur nods, though in truth, he has no idea.

* * *

Aruna’s extraction goes off without a hitch. Her mind is easy to break into; like most well-intentioned people who lead double lives, she both fears and wishes for someone to find out. Yusuf builds her apartment, complete with the locked filing cabinet in her study. In it, Eames finds a thick accordion file labeled _Youshiro,_ and reads through it while Arthur distracts her, in the guise of her husband Mani. They’re in and out in under an hour, real time. Yusuf takes off immediately for the airport, PASIV in hand, anxious to start building Aruna and Saito’s love-nest before he loses the details. Eames and Arthur’s are leaving the next afternoon.

“Mal was right,” Eames says, once the two of them are back in their hotel. “I found entire transcripts of their pillow talk.”

“I guess we should be glad she didn’t have home movies or something,” Arthur answers, in the midst of packing.

“Might have helped you with forging Aruna,” Eames points out. “Should it come to that.”

Arthur huffs a laugh. “I’m sure you’d just love that.”

“Watching you fake interest in another man? Not especially,” Eames says, his tone sharpening.

Arthur pauses, shirt half-folded. “Are you insinuating something?”

Eames glances over to him. “Would it strike a nerve if I was?”

Arthur looks back into his suitcase. “Everything you do strikes a nerve. It’s like biting tinfoil, talking to you.”

Eames laughs. Arthur snaps open his shirt and starts refolding it, grumbling internally.

Eames’ hand on his arm stops him.

“What--”

Eames kisses him. It’s soft, a hesitant press of damp lips against the corner of his own.

Arthur’s too surprised to even shut his eyes. It’s a lingering kiss, and after Eames breaks away, he stays close for a second, eyes closed, nostrils flaring as he breathes, hand still curled around Arthur’s wrist. Like he’s under a spell, waiting for something.

“I’m not here for you,” Arthur says, breaking it.

Eames huffs a laugh -- Arthur feels the wind of it across his cheek. “I know,” he says, opening his eyes.

“I knew you tipped off Miles, the second I saw Mal I knew you were behind it. But I didn’t sign on to this insanity for you, or for...”

 _Us_ , he thinks, but the word sticks to his tongue, and he swallows it back. There have been kisses before this one, many fights, countless shared dreamscapes, and a slow burn of desire over the course of years, but _us_ is still a forbidden word between the two of them. _Us_ is a promise neither of them has ever been willing to make.

The last time they came close, Eames left him to go after Mal. _I knew you wouldn’t fall apart,_ he’d told Arthur later. _And that she would._

Arthur's forgiven him. Mostly.

“Why are you here, then?” Eames asks him patiently.

“I need to know what happened.”

“With Dom,” Eames says. If his tone is a little bitter, it’s also forgiving. These are old hurts, scarred over but still aching: Eames leaving him for Mal, Arthur's tenacious grief and inability to let go.

“That was my price for coming on. Mal said she’d show me.”

“Show you?” Eames says. He looks pained, nearly appalled. “You want to _watch?_ ”

"Eames--"

"Why, Arthur? Tell me why this matters so much to you."

Arthur shakes his head, takes a step back. "You saw what they were like. Have you ever seen two people more stupidly in love?"

Eames is looking at him with a heavy gaze, mouth set in a grim line.

The truth is that, well-versed as he was in desire and lust and wanting, until he met Dom and Mal Cobb, he really didn't know anything about love. Anything beautiful he's had since then, he's owed to them. Hell, Dom even introduced him to Eames.

The truth is that since Dom died, it feels like there’s been a shard of ice embedded in Arthur's heart, spreading like hoarfrost, no matter what Arthur does. It's been more than a year and it's still there, even in the sticky heat of Chennai, even under Eames' burning, inviting gaze.

“I need to understand," Arthur says finally. "How that could happen. How two people could disintegrate like that.”

Eames is still looking at him, but some of the tension and intent has gone out of his gaze. He looks tired. "You can't let it go, can you?"

Arthur shakes his head. "I've tried," he says helplessly.

Arthur can feel the moment begin to fragment. Eames starts to turn away, and Arthur knows what’s coming: they’ll drift back into the separate orbits they’ve been following for years, slowly circling each other, waiting for some external force to bring them back together again. They’ve had so many _almosts._

Arthur’s realizes that he's tired of running in place, of standing in his own way. He grabs Eames’ wrist. “Maybe... maybe after the job, we could...”

“Could we?” Eames asks, turning back to him, raising his eyebrows. The man has the most obscenely suggestive eyebrows.

“Maybe,” Arthur confirms. There’s a smile trying to work its way out of the corner of his mouth.

Eames squeezes his hand once, the pressure of a promise, then turns away to finish packing.

* * *

“Saito’s a complicated man. At least, according to Aruna’s subconscious,” Eames tells Mal over Skype, later that night. In twelve hours, they’ll be back in Hong Kong, but Mal wanted to hear their report as soon as possible. “He’s a walking oxymoron. He values traditions. He’s a kendo master and a Shinto practitioner. He takes honor very seriously. But he’s also a businessman, and a fairly ruthless one. He’s taking a huge risk by seeing Aruna, but that hasn’t stopped him.”

“He’s at a crossroads,” Mal murmurs.

“Aruna seems to think he’s going through a midlife crisis, which I don’t think is too far off the mark.”

“He’s not as sure of himself. He’s weaker to suggestion than he might be otherwise,” Arthur adds musingly.

“So how do we turn this to our advantage?” Mal asks.

“There were a few episodes that seem to have been defining moments in Saito’s life,” Eames says. He ticks them off on his fingers. “First: his father leaving him when he was a kid. He’s got a ton of hang-ups about honor from it. Second: his grandfather’s death. His will set him on the fast track to becoming Proclus Global’s CEO. And in between the two, a suicide attempt. He’s talked to Aruna about the first two, but we’ve got nothing on that, besides the report from the forest wardens that found him and his hospital charts.”

“The silence surrounding it gives it a lot of gravity,” Arthur observes. “There’s something there that he’s hiding, maybe even from himself.”

“I found something,” Eames says. “My gut tells me it’s related to the suicide attempt, but I can’t say for sure.”

“What is it?” Mal asks.

“In Aruna’s dream, she had a sheet of paper that was blank, except for a name printed on the top: Hikaru. No surname.”

Mal leans back in the computer chair. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Not for us either,” Eames replies. “I’m looking into it.”

Mal nods. She trusts Eames’ snooping skills. “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She shuts down the computer and stretches. Her spine cracks, echoing in the empty restaurant. Ariadne had gone to pick up Yusuf from the airport, and Fischer is off doing whatever neurotic, rich men do to blow off steam in Hong Kong.

She stares at the notes she’s taken: a galaxy of words, lines, and arrows that sprawl across the page. It feels very much like she’s planning a battle.

It’s been a week and a half since she’s talked to James and Phillipa. She’s been too cowardly to call them, despite how they’ll worry. She’s afraid she won’t be able to keep herself from telling them that she might actually be coming home. To do that, and then fail: the possibility is unthinkable. It makes her freeze in horror.

Mal rips the page of notes out of her book, and pins it on the wall in front of her. The blank page beckons her, and she bends to the notebook, creating a new galaxy of thoughts.


	10. Chapter 10

As always happens, the days leading up to the job move like a waltz, quick-quick-slow, the grind of research and experiments and the thrill of the plan taking shape, moving ahead in leaps and bounds.

* * *

Yusuf grunts when he hits the floor. “Oof. Remind me again why I’m the lab rat here?”

“Arthur and Eames aren’t back yet,” Ariadne says, helping him up. “Mal’s...” The two of them look over at Mal, who’s staring out the window, drumming her fingers on the sill.

“Mal’s busy,” Ariadne finishes. “And--”

“And I’m your employer,” Fischer says, from where he’s perched his skinny arse against a desk. “It’s my job to supervise.”

“Creep,” Yusuf says, quiet enough for only Ariadne to hear. He’s rewarded with a smile from the pretty ( _young,_ comes the warning, in Eames’ voice, _young, innocent, and out of your league_ ) chemist. Really, this is why he’s allowing her to inject her homebrewed drugs into him and then push him over, again and again. Yusuf is a sucker for pretty and unavailable girls.

“How was it?” Ariadne asks.

“Good,” Yusuf says. He leans back into his chair while Ariadne takes his vitals. “Sharper than the last batch. Stable. The kick still works, obviously. Why does my face hurt?”

“I slapped you,” Ariadne says, making a note in her lab book. She glances up at Yusuf. “Twice, actually.”

“Usually, when women slap me, I’ve done something to offend them first,” Yusuf says, massaging his jaw.

“Sorry,” she says, too busy being a genius chemist to bother sounding contrite. “But it was stable? You didn’t even notice?”

Yusuf pulls the IV out of his arm. “Not at the time. Now that I think about it, though, something made me stumble.”

“So there’s still physical-oneiric resonance,” Ariadne says.

“You made that phrase up,” Yusuf accuses.

Ariadne grins. “Yeah, for my thesis. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

She’s young, maybe, but Yusuf would disagree on Eames’ presumption of Ariadne’s innocence. “It does. You’re very good at what you do. We’re lucky to have you.”

Ariadne smiles down into her notes, like she doesn’t want Yusuf to see.

* * *

It’s their first test run in the Chennai level, and Mal is laying out the rough plan. “We’ll take Saito here first. Arthur will be forging Aruna. He--”

She turns, however, and discovers that Arthur is gone. In his place, a petite, dark-skinned Tamil woman is adjusting her sari in the reflection of a cafe window.

“I’ll be suggesting the concepts to Saito’s conscious mind,” she says in accented English. She squats down and draws a diagram in the dust beside the road. “When we take him down to the next level, Saito’s subconscious will feed the idea right back to him.”

She grins with startlingly white teeth up at Mal. “Have I got it right?”

“Exactly so, Aruna.” She feels oddly relieved, to see that Arthur is still so quick to pick up the nuances of the plan that’s been unfolding. They still work well together, despite everything.

Mal nudges Ariadne. “Come on,” she tells the girl, who’s gaping at the woman occupying Arthur’s space. “It’s not polite to stare.”

“How does she feel?” she hears Eames ask Aruna in an undertone. The city is so quiet, empty of people, that his voice carries more than he probably realizes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Eames walking close to Aruna, matching the pace of her shorter legs.

“Good,” Aruna says. “Like... honey and cinnamon with a pinch of cayenne thrown in. A little sad, worried about the future, but I’m--” Aruna’s skin falls away, all of a sudden, and it’s Arthur there, walking next to Eames. “She’s calm. Not so restless, not searching. It’s a nice change.”

Mal steps up her pace, suddenly feeling like she’s intruding on a private moment, listening to things she has no right to hear.

Topside, Mal catches Arthur by the arm. “May I talk with you for a moment?” she says.

Arthur gives her a wary glance. “Sure, I guess.”

“I just want your input on Yusuf’s layout for the second level.”

She doesn’t miss the way he looks over at Eames, or the minute nod the other man gives him. Something happened in Chennai, she’s sure. But asking Arthur about it would just cause him to shut down, while Eames would just cheerfully lie to her.

She lays out the blueprints that Yusuf delivered to her yesterday. Arthur runs his fingers down the twisting passageways of the Japanese castle-like structure Yusuf had created. "He does good work," Arthur says. "Yusuf, I mean."

"He's the best," Mal agrees. "It's why I hired him."

Arthur shrugs, running a finger down a spiraling stair. "What are you going to do, after all of this?"

Mal swallows, taken aback by the abrupt question. "Go home, of course."

"What's home?" Arthur asks. "I have four apartments on three different continents. I know you probably have your own hiding holes. What so important about home?"

"Home is where my children are," Mal says, not sure why she sounds so defensive to her own ears.

"So bring them here," Arthur says. "Or New Zealand, or Jamaica, or Portugal. Why go through all this--" Arthur waves his hand at the complicated blueprints "--when it'd be a hell of a lot less complicated to bring your kids to wherever you are?"

Mal steadies herself on the desk, breathing slowly. She doesn’t answer.

"It must have occurred to you, Mal."

"Of course it did," she says. "I couldn't do that to them."

"Really?" Arthur says. "Why not? If home is where Phillipa and James are, bring them to you. You're smart enough to get away with it. Eames could stage a kidnapping in his sleep for you.”

“That’s not the point,” Mal says, trying to keep herself from snapping.

"What is the point, then?” Arthur hisses. “Because from where I'm standing, these months on the run looks a lot more like penance."

Arthur's right of course. The cold tone in his voice shows that he knows it to.

"I can't help but wonder," he says, "with all your protestations of innocence, what it is you're trying to atone for."

"If you only knew," she says softly.

Arthur swallows. "If I knew, then what?"

Mal shuts her eyes, and recites: "If I succeed, I am going home to California. I am going to take my children to the beach, and buy them all the ice cream they want. I'm going to cook, and keep a garden, and write in my journal. I'm going to convince my father to get a lectureship somewhere close by. I'm going to get a therapist. I will be civil to Dom's mother, no matter how much she hates me, and allow her to visit on the weekends. I will put up with the night terrors and Somnacin withdrawal and frustrations of raising children and the unglamorous domesticity, I will grieve and mourn, and I will live. Because that's what I want. Whether I deserve it or not, _I want it._ "

Arthur's staring at her, his face stony, when she opens her eyes.

"And I will always have a guest room ready for you, when you finally come visit us. With a double bed," she adds, after a moment, "for when Eames wants to come too."

The stone cracks, just a bit, and for a brief moment, she can see how wretched Arthur really feels, how conflicted.

The moment passes. Arthur looks back to the blueprints, and points at one passage. “If you loop this staircase, it could provide a good shortcut back to the main floor.”

Mal takes a breath. “Show me,” she says.

* * *

“I’ve got a hit on Hikaru,” Eames shouts across the warehouse. “I think,” he adds, in a quieter tone.

Mal jogs over to his station, a large corner table by the kitchen. The table is filled with notes, his laptop, and empty cups of tea. “Hikaru Tanaka was a fellow student at Tokyo University. Same age as Saito, was in the business college as well. And he was in the kendo club with our man.” Eames brings up a picture of the kendo club, posing in their identical hakama and kendogi. Eames points at two young men, kneeling side by side in the front row. “That’s them.”

“You think it’s _the_ Hikaru?” Mal asks.

“It’s the best connection I’ve been able to find. It’s a common enough name, though.”

“What happened to him?” Arthur says, appearing at Mal’s side. “Where is he now?”

“I’m trying to find out-- oh. He’s dead.”

Mal leans down, looking over Eames’ laptop. “How?”

Eames looks up at her and Arthur. “Suicide. His remains were found in the Aokigahara forest, about three months after Saito’s attempt.”

“When did he die?” Mal asks, leaning to read over Eames’ shoulder.

Eames scrolls through the translation of the police report. “No way to tell, with the decomposition. But there was a missing persons report filed around the same time as Saito’s attempt.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Mal says. Eames shakes his head.

Arthur drums his fingers on the table. “I’m going out there,” he says.

“Yes,” Mal says. “Eames can go w--”

“No, I’ll go by myself,” Arthur says, interrupting her. “Cobol’s got connections in Japan, and we don’t want a repeat of what happened in Paris.”

“Eames can take care of himself,” Mal says, staring hard at Arthur.

“I’m also capable of defending myself,” Eames points out.

“His Japanese is crap,” Arthur says.

“Excuse me, I'm right here!”

“It’s not worth the risk,” Arthur says, ignoring him.

“And what about the risk to you?” Mal says. “What if Cobol finds out you’re working for us? What if Saito--”

“I can take care of myself. It’s kind of late for you to try _mothering_ me, Mal,” Arthur say, voice low and dangerous.

Eames winces when he sees the look on Mal’s face. She looks like she’s going to start shouting, but instead she turns away, stomping back towards her desk.

“It’s saying things like that that made her pull a gun on you last time,” Eames says.

“No, it wasn’t,” Arthur says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Last time, I said much worse.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Eames grumbles. “The two of you are going to drive me into an early fucking grave.”

Arthur lays a hand on Eames’ shoulder and gives him a brief, sympathetic squeeze. In spite of his annoyance, Eames leans into the touch.

* * *

“Bloody trees,” Yusuf whines to Ariadne and Eames over drinks the next night. “I’m not a landscape architect. I could design the Taj Mahal, the entire city of Medina from memory. Hell, I could even do Central Park, if you asked. But I’ve been reading up on this forest. It’s bloody gruesome, open graves and restless spirits.”

“Are you saying you can’t do it?” Eames scoffs.

Yusuf looks at him. “Don’t take your bad mood out on me, mate. Not my fault Arthur flitted off to Japan alone.”

“I’m not--” Eames begins to say.

“Wait, you and Arthur?” Ariadne interrupts. “Seriously?”

Eames sighs. “We are not talking about Arthur and I.”

“He’s been carrying a torch for him for years,” Yusuf says, sipping on his beer.

“Yusuf!”

“An Olympic torch,” Yusuf stage-whispers. Ariadne giggles.

“Oi!” Eames shouts, flinging an ice cube at Yusuf’s face. He’s drunk, fortunately for Yusuf, and he misses by a few inches.

“Sorry, mate. It’s for your own good.” Yusuf isn’t sorry at all for disrupting Eames’ one-person pity party, but it’s better to lie than have Eames stomp out in a huff or something worse. “Seriously, though. Mal has been riding my ass about this forest. Last time I was anywhere with that many trees, it was the Royal Botanical Garden. Satellite photos and documentaries only gets me so far.”

“I’ve been there,” Ariadne volunteers.

Eames and Yusuf turn to look at her.

Ariadne shrugs. “I spent a semester in Japan as an undergrad. Took a day trip.”

“That’s a morbid tourist destination,” Eames says.

“That’s brilliant,” Yusuf says, ignoring him. “Could I...?”

Ariadne smiles. “I’ll show you tomorrow, after I finish testing the latest prototype.”

She gets up and goes to the bar. Yusuf’s eyes inevitably follow her.

“That’s a hell of a first date,” Eames mutters, swallowing the rest of his gin.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Yusuf shoots back, who’s heard the horror story of Eames’ first time working with Arthur.

Eames slumps back in his chair, looking defeated. Yusuf raises his bottle of beer, drinks it down, then goes to join Ariadne at the bar.

* * *

“This was my brother,” Yuudai Tanaka says to Arthur, gesturing to a picture on an altar, high up on a shelf in the apartment. Hikaru Tanaka’s younger brother is in his early forties, an artist that’s been influential in Tokyo’s avant-garde scene. Arthur’s posing as a Fulbright scholar, writing about the social and artistic impacts of suicide in Japanese culture. Tanaka had seemed reserved at first, until Arthur had managed to hold up a discussion of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto in fluent Japanese, after which he’d warmed to Arthur.

“He looks young,” Arthur observes, looking at the picture.

“We don’t always appear the age we are,” Tanaka says, with a wry smile. “Nor the age we feel.”

Arthur, who has lived a lot longer than his thirty years, if you count dreams, nods.

“He was very sensitive. Romantic, you would call it. He was actually quite artistic as well, especially when we were younger. But he was the first son, and my parents decided that he should go into business. I could be the artist in the family.” Tanaka smiles wryly.

“Was he... unhappy about that?” Arthur asks.

“He wanted our parents to be proud of him. He...” Tanaka trails off, staring at the photo of the young man. “He wanted to balance their dreams with his own, but could not find his way. Business did not suit him. He did not understand how he was to live in that world. He did the only honorable thing he could think to do.”

Arthur nods, gazing at the picture of the young man with the affable, closed-mouth smile. “Was he close with anyone else at the university? Any friends? Lovers?”

Tanaka looks at him askance. Arthur used the word _aijin_ rather than _koibito_. The latter was a closer translation to “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” while the former implied a more illicit relationship.

“Have you read the novel _Nami no Tō_?” Tanaka asks.

“Yes,” Arthur replies, nodding. In truth, he picked up a copy in Hong Kong the day he left, and is only about a quarter of the way through it. His Kanji-reading skills are rusty.

“Come with me,” Tanaka says. “I would like to show you something.”

Tanaka guides Arthur to the empty bedroom that’s been converted into a studio. Paint and ink stains the tiled floor, and canvases are stacked in the shelves that line the wall. The air is heavy with the smells of paint, turpentine, and unidentifiable chemicals.

The sight and smells remind Arthur, suddenly and vividly, of Eames’ apartment in Los Angeles. It’s been over a year since he’s been there, but the memory is almost tangible.

Tanaka kneels down and thumbs through a number of unframed canvases. “A few years ago, I painted a series about my brother’s suicide. Most were sold. I kept this one back. It did not seem right to sell or display it.”

Tanaka pulls out the canvas and sets it against the wall. It's from a few years ago, obviously influenced by the Superflat movement, with stylized gore and smooth textures. Two young men stand by a tree, trapped in a kiss, while their guts spill out from twin wounds on their belly, the blood slick and shiny, spilling over their bare thighs and hardened cocks.

“I can see why you held this back,” Arthur says.

“I only want to honor him. He was my older brother, and I looked up to him. But I wasn’t blind to his desires.”

Tanaka tilts his head as he looks at the painting. “Hikaru was an honorable man. Too honorable to live with himself. This world has very little for men like my brother.”

Arthur shifts in place. “You mean... gay men?”

Tanaka laughs, somewhat desolately. “No. The men, and women too, who are caught between their love and their honor. Death is preferable to that.”

Arthur lets out a harsh breath, a sigh that is almost a bitter laugh. “Yes,” he says. “I know the type of people you mean.”


	11. Chapter 11

“We at the Nature Conservancy believe in pragmatic solutions to controversial issues, Mr. Saito,” Arthur says, leaning backs in his chair. “Our corporate partnerships are an important part of advancing our mission of conservation. As an energy company, Proclus Global has a very important role to play.”

“We’re well aware,” Saito says coolly. “I assure you that we are exacting in our safety and environmental standards, Mr. Hathaway.”

Jason Hathaway is a persona that Arthur pulls out when he needs to be underestimated, dumb, and forgettable. It’s surprisingly comfortable, slipping into Jason Hathaway’s boring, privileged skin. Jason has all the things a man his age could want in life: two houses, a beautiful wife, two kids, a family-friendly dog, an organic garden, the occasional extra-marital fling, several flat screen TVs, paid vacation time.

“I’m sure you do,” Arthur replies, voice slick and corporate. “But we’ll still need to do periodic inspections of your plants. Don’t want another Deepwater Horizon on our hands!” Arthur chuckles.

Saito smiles thinly. He thinks Jason Hathaway is a self-indulgent, materialistic, entitled fool, and he’s entirely right. This is what Arthur was hoping for.

* * *

Arthur learns a lot from being the focus of Saito’s disdain. Saito dislikes Jason Hathaway because Hathaway wants nothing, whereas he, Saito, wants something he can’t even articulate. It’s a feeling Arthur knows well.

In his meeting with Saito, ostensibly to hammer out some kind of partnership between Proclus Global and the Nature Conservancy, Arthur recognized the emptiness in Saito, a void that aches like hunger. Arthur knows the signs as intimately as he knows his own scars.

Arthur has always wanted too much, mostly from people who had nothing they could give. He learned at a young age that it was easier to shape himself around other people’s desires and expectations. He transmuted his own wants into others’, sometimes so deeply that he found himself disappearing into the roles that were created for him. He had a totem long before he started dreaming: a loaded die he picked up in when he was nineteen, after a long night’s work in Atlantic City. A reminder: no matter who he was pretending to be, there had to be something in him that was immutable.

There could have been different paths for both of them. Arthur only got into dreaming by a series of events -- resembling nothing so much as a Rube Goldberg contraption -- that led him to Dominic Cobb and his fiancee, Mallorie Miles.

( _You should take a chance on us_ , she’d told him after their first disastrous job. Arthur doesn’t gamble -- all the thrills may lay in gambling, he once told Dom, but the best bet was always to rig the game -- but the Cobbs were, in most things, the exception to every rule he’d ever set for himself.)

Saito became a business man because his grandfather left him the company. He stuck with it because, Arthur believes, he had nothing else.

Saito would make a terrifying extractor, should he ever go into dream-based espionage.

“We might be creating a monster here,” Arthur tells Mal after another dinner with Saito and his board of directors. “Right now, this business is his outlet. If we take that away from him, who knows what he’ll do?”

“Do you think he’s mentally unsound?”

“No,” Arthur says, boiling water for tea in his hotel room. “I think he’s one of the sanest people I’ve ever seen. He’s just... hollow inside.”

“How can you tell?”

 _Takes one to know one,_ Arthur thinks. “Are you questioning my judgement?”

Mal sighs, and static fills the silence between them. The sound of it makes guilt rise up his throat, sour-tasting in the back of his mouth. Arthur knows he’s going to have to forgive her eventually, or make a concerted effort never to see her again; he’s not sure which possibility hurts more to think about.

“Just trust me,” Arthur says, realizing how ironic the plea is. “On this,” he amends.

“Okay,” Mal says, “tell me this. Is he happy?”

“Happy?” Arthur asks doubtfully.

“Happy,” Mal insists. “Fulfilled. Satisfied. Content.”

“Not happy,” Arthur says. “Rarely fulfilled. Satisfied on a shallow level, but not a deeper one. Never content.”

“So we’ll offer him happiness,” Mal says. “In exchange for his empire.”

“We can’t deliver on that,” Arthur says. “Nobody can.”

“We don’t have to deliver what we promise, cher. That’s what makes us criminals.”

Arthur thinks of his conversation with Eames in Chennai, as he pours boiled water over the matcha powder. He takes his tea over to the window, gazing at the neon spread of Tokyo beneath him. “Happiness wouldn’t be enough for him. He’s lived without it for this long, I don’t see him jumping for it now.”

“You’re right,” Mal says. He can see her in his mind’s eye, pacing the section of the empty restaurant she’s staked out for herself. There’s a brief hiss, and then a long pause before Mal’s next words. She’s just lit a cigarette. “He doesn’t need happiness.”

“You’re smoking again?” Arthur asks, surprised.

Another pause. “I never really stopped,” Mal confesses. There’s a beat of silence, just long enough for a breath; Arthur imagines that she just exhaled a plume of smoke. “I just fooled Dom into thinking I did.”

“Fooled me too,” Arthur says thoughtfully. Mal has always had the capacity to surprise him.

“You would have told Dom,” she says softly.

The fondness in her voice, the subtle longing in it, makes Arthur realize that they’re dangerously close to having a real conversation. He takes a bracing sip of his tea and turns away from the window. “So we’re not going to sell him on happiness. What do we give him instead?”

Mal sighs, long and heavy. “He’s a haunted man,” she says slowly.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “Are you saying--”

“We’re going to give him a chance to confront his ghosts. He may not want happiness, but he’ll take a chance on getting some peace, I think.”

Arthur swirls the tea in his cup, mulling that over. “Yeah. He would.”

* * *

Far below the sea wall Mal’s sitting on, her husband is lying on the beach, Phillipa and James asleep on either side of him.

Mal watches her husband, the book in his hand, the burning sky at sunset that tints his hair gold. The children lie curled towards him, like parentheses.

“You have to let him go,” Ariadne says, sitting down next to her. This is the second time she’s invited herself into one of Mal’s dreams, which shows that Mal isn’t the only insane one on this team.

Still, Mal finds her presence oddly comforting. She says, “I know.”

“You can’t let yourself lose focus,” the girl says. “We’re days away from being ready.”

“This isn’t an indulgence,” Mal says. At Ariadne’s incredulous look, she adds, “Or not only an indulgence.”

“So why...?” Ariadne asks.

“To remind myself of why I’m doing this awful, insane thing in the first place.”

Ariadne furrows her brow. “You don’t want to do this job.”

“No,” Mal says. She leans forward, looking down. The sea wall is part of an optical illusion; the ground doesn’t look far away unless one stares straight down. Below her feet, there are hundreds of feet of space, a yawning abyss. “I promised I would never do this to another person. It makes me sick at heart.”

Ariadne asks, “Do the others know? That you...”

“Eames suspects, but knows better than to ask. Arthur would never believe it.”

“Why?”

Below them, Dom turns from his book, gazing up at the two of them. Mal stands, the rocks warm and steady under her feet.

“I need to ask a favor of you,” Mal says, offering Ariadne a hand up.

Ariadne places her hand in Mal’s. “What is it?” she asks as she stands.

“Make sure I finish this job. No matter what, don’t let me lose my resolve.”

“What?” Ariadne asks.

“Promise me,” Mal insists. “In case I forget what I’m fighting for.”

“Why would you need me to do that?” Ariadne asks, nervous.

Mal looks down at Dom and the children. “It’s happened before.”

* * *

The next day finds Mal walking in the hot sun on a nearby street, her thoughts an angry buzz. She has better things to do than meet with her megalomaniacal employer in a teahouse. She doesn’t appreciate being taken away from her work to give progress reports to micro-managers.

With all that in mind, she knows better than to be catty when she reaches the tiered building on Stubbs Road. Neurotic and egotistical as he may be, Robert Fischer still holds all the power in the world over her. So she allows him to shake her hand, like she hadn’t seen him in the workshop yesterday, and murmurs, “Mr. Fischer.”

“Ms. Cobb,” he replies, matching her polite tone. “Thank you for joining me.”

He pulls out her chair for her, a gesture she has always found frustratingly chivalrous. “We can talk freely here,” he says, sitting down himself. “I own this restaurant, and all the people here are loyal to me.”

“It’s... lovely,” she says, not able or willing to hide her indifference.

He smiles faintly, self-effacingly. “Thank you,” he says. He pulls his napkin off the plate and snaps it open. “I’d like a progress report, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all. I’m just relieved you don’t expect me to try to engage in small talk.”

Fischer gives her a genuine smile, half-hidden behind his water glass. “I appreciate your directness, as always.” He nods to one of the waiters that’s standing by, who comes and serves them chrysanthemum tea. “How close are you to being ready?”

“Very. Yusuf has finished creating the three dream levels, and Ariadne’s testing the final serum tonight. Eames is still investigating Saito, but he’ll do research until the last second.”

He’s been complaining about this being a rush job, in fact, but Mal sees no reason to let Fischer know that.

She continues, "Arthur’s scheduled to return from Tokyo tomorrow evening, and he says he’s finished perfecting his forges.”

“And you trust him?” Ficher asks.

“Arthur’s the most professional man I know. He’d never say he was ready if he were not.”

“All right,” he says with a shrug. “And what about you? Are you ready for this, Mal?”

Mal looks up sharply, but the conversation is forced into a pause, as a waiter brings dumplings and pork buns over to their plates. Fischer begins to eat his delicately, while Mal ignores the food on her plate.

“Mr. Fischer--”

“I don’t remember everything of your attempt to extract from me. I do remember the appearance of a man, when we were in the casino. An unexpected guest, it seemed.” He blows on his tea, sipping at it. “It didn’t take much digging to find out who he was.”

“What are you driving at?” Mal asks.

Fischer sets down his cup and asks,“Should I be expecting your dead husband to make an appearance in the course of the job?”

Mal feels, more than anything else, humiliated. She sits silently, waiting until the shame turns to anger, before replying. “You’ve put a lot of time and money into this endeavor to get cold feet now, Robert.”

“That’s not an answer,” he points out.

“No. It’s a salient point, though. You’ve trusted us this far, so why start questioning me now? If you’re nervous about coming into the dream with us, Eames and I could come up with some alternative task for you--”

“That’s enough,” he says, staring hard at her.

She returns his gaze steadily. “The nature of Somnacin means that we’re all liable to bring in projections of our subconscious. We all have skeletons in our closets, and sometimes, they come out for a chat. My team, however, is well aware of the possibility, and have trained themselves for it. The only ones who haven’t are Saito, which is to our advantage, and yourself.”

She puts her forearms on the table, leaning forward. “Are you worried about what ghosts might come out of your subconscious? I can think of one that I wouldn’t like to meet.”

Fischer is staring at her, fury and a sort of grudging respect in his eyes. “Well played, Ms. Cobb.”

“This isn’t a game, Mr. Fischer.” She wishes she could tell him how sick she feels at the thought of performing an inception on someone, of violating their own free will. But she understands how dangerous it might be to let anyone see her own doubts on this. “The seed of the idea we plant will grow in Saito’s mind. It’ll change him. It could become the cornerstone of his world.”

Fischer leans back in his chair and looks at her. “My sources say that you haven’t always been this cautious.”

“What do I care for your sources?” Mal spits. “I’m as cautious as I need to be. I will do what it takes to finish this job and get back to my children.”

“By any means?” Fischer asks.

“Of course,” Mal says, without even thinking.

Ficher holds her gaze for a moment longer, then reaches into the pocket of his blazer and pulls out an envelope. He tosses it on the table in front of her.

“What’s this?” she asks, eyeing it warily.

“Flight itinerary. Saito is flying from Hong Kong to New York in four days’ time. A direct flight, sixteen hours in the air. It should be all the time you need.”

Mal blinks, then takes a sip of her tea, trying to shake herself out of her shock. “You’ll have to buy out the entire first class, the flight attendant--”

“I bought the airline,” Fischer says. At her look, he smiles a little. “Seemed like a good investment.”

Mal stares at the envelope.

“You have four days,” Fischer says, and drinks the rest of his tea.


	12. Chapter 12

Waiting to board the plane, Mal can’t help but remember that, should she fail, the only thing that will greet her in America is a swift ride to the nearest FBI field office.

She looks at Fischer, who’s affecting a look of boredom while perusing _Forbes_ , and then to Eames, who’s playing some game on his iPhone. Arthur’s a few rows over, paging through a copy of _The Standard_. He meets her eyes, and gives her a fleeting hint of a smile. She nods.

The airline's agents call out for first class boarding.

 _Now or never,_ Dom whispers from her memories.

* * *

“Sir?” Mal says. Saito turns in his seat to her. “I think you dropped this.”

He looks in consternation at his passport, held in her hand. He touches his pocket -- now empty, thanks to Eames, and his pickpocketing skills.

“Thank you,” he says, taking it from her.

“It’s nothing,” she replies. After a moment, she adds, “I’m sorry, I can’t help but ask... Are you Youshiro Saito? The businessman?”

“I am,” he says, his voice a mix of cautiousness and curiosity.

“I thought so,” Mal says, somewhat breathlessly. “My husband, he greatly admired you.”

“Oh yes?” Saito asks, wryly.

“He was a recipient of a grant from your foundation. He was working on farmland desalinization projects in West Africa. Michel Arnault?” Mal adds, a little hopefully.

Saito looks momentarily taken aback. “I’m sorry, I don’t--”

Mal shakes her head. “Of course you don’t remember. Silly of me to think you might.”

The flight attendant comes by, taking their drink orders. Mal orders wine, and Saito asks for water.

“What were you and your husband doing in Hong Kong?” he asks politely.

Mal allows her face to fall a bit. “I was here by myself, actually.”

Saito raises his eyebrows in polite surprise. “Is Mr. Arnault still working in West Africa?”

Mal looks down. “No. He... he died last year.”

“Ah,” Saito says. “I am very sorry.”

“You needn’t be, but thank you.” Mal sighs softly. She shifts in her seat, crossing her legs, fussing with her skirt. “I needed some time alone after the funeral. Traveling always helps me clear my head, I find.”

“I can see how that would be true,” Saito says, his tone neutral. Not overly sympathetic, but not bored, either. She needs to wrap up their conversation before he loses interest.

“And now, I’m off to New York. Leaving behind my old life and beginning a new one.”

“That sounds uniquely terrifying,” Saito says, with a gentle smile.

“It is,” Mal says, favoring him with a smile. “And oddly thrilling, I find. I’ve lost nearly everything, and yet, to my surprise, I feel like I’ve been set free.”

The flight attendant, hearing her cue, comes back with their drinks. Mal grabs both glasses, and tips the sedative into Saito’s. “A toast,” she says, handing him his spiked drink. “To the unique terror of being free.”

Saito laughs. “Indeed,” he says, touching his glass to hers, drinking from it when she does.

“I’ll stop talking your ear off, now,” she says, with a self-deprecating laugh. “It was a pleasure to meet you, though.”

“You as well, Mrs. Arnault,” he says politely. “Have a pleasant flight.”

An hour later, they’ve reached their cruising altitude. Mal kicks the back of Saito’s chair, watching his hand on the armrest. He doesn’t stir.

She leans forward. “Monsieur Saito?”

No reaction.

“We’re good,” she announces.

Their flight attendant, Wen-Jing, brings out the PASIV, and there’s a flurry of movement as everyone takes off their jackets and attaches the IVs to their wrists.

Wen-Jing looks up at Mal, hand hovering over the button on the PASIV.

“Break a leg, everyone,” Mal says. It’s what Dom always said, and the words slip out of her mouth unthinkingly. Before she can see how Arthur or Eames will react, she nods to Wen-Jing, and lets her eyes slip closed.

* * *

Rain pounds the roof of the car. Windshield wipers beat rhythmically. Mal opens her eyes.

It takes a moment for it all to come back to her. She looks down at Dom’s watch on her wrist. The seconds tick in an erratic beat. Of course.

The doors open, and Ariadne gets in the front seat, looking like a half-drowned kitten. “Jesus,” she says, wringing out her hair. “I should have told Yusuf not to drink all that damn champagne.”

“Is that why we’re in a monsoon?” Mal asks. “Silly man.”

“If I weren’t so scared I felt like throwing up,” Ariadne replies, “I’d have wanted a drink too.”

“First job is always the most frightening,” Mal says. She opens her mouth to say more, but is interrupted by her phone ringing. She pulls out her phone. “What is it, Eames?”

“This isn’t Eames,” Dom says.

Mal freezes. “Dom?”

Ariadne looks up, eyes going wide.

“Hello, Mal.”

Mal swallows. “I can’t talk right now, Dom. I’m working.”

“I know you are, sweetheart. I needed to tell you something though, without Eames jumping me.”

Mal takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for that, but you know--”

“I don’t need your excuses, Mal. It’s too late for that.”

Mal bites her lip. “Dom, I--”

“There’s something you’ve missed. Something you didn’t think to look for.”

“Please, love, just this once, I need you to--”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Dom says steadily, and then there’s a click, and silence. _Call ended,_ the screen blinks.

“What the hell was that?” Ariadne says.

Mal shakes her head, opens her mouth to answer, when Fischer opens the door and gets in.

“What’s with the rain?” he asks. “Is this some kind of psychological thing?”

Mal swallows. “No. Just a dreamer who had a little too much free champagne.”

Fischer rolls his eyes. “Of course.”

Mal meets Ariadne’s eyes as she puts her cell phone back in her pocket, shaking her head the tiniest bit. _Don’t say anything._

Ariadne gives her a minute nod, and looks out into the pouring rain. “There they are,” she says, pointing.

Mal looks out in time to see Yusuf come out, holding an umbrella over Saito and Arthur, disguised as Aruna, as they walk out of the airport. He escorts them to a black minivan with tinted windows, holding the door open for them, then gets in the driver’s side. Eames should already be in the passenger’s seat, balaclava in place, gun out.

The minivan pulls out. After a moment, Mal follows it. As she drives, Mal tries to shake off her anxiety. Except for the phone call from Dom, everything is going according to plan.

In a matter of minutes, it all goes to shit.

* * *

Saito throws his wallet at Eames. “There’s 25,000 rupees in there, and 2000 in Hong Kong dollars. The wallet’s worth even more.”

Eames doesn’t pick it up. “I’m not interested in small change.” He lets his accent thicken a bit, picking up some northern hints. He’ll be meeting Saito again, in the next level of the dream, and doesn’t want to be too recognizable.

“Please,” Aruna says. “Tell us what you want.”

“Don’t worry yourself, miss.” He grins at her. “You’ll find out soon enough--”

A thud interrupts him. The car jerks, off-balancing him, and Saito takes advantage of his momentary distraction to try and jump him.

Eames punches Saito in the nose, not hard enough to break it, but enough to get him off. “Oi,” he says, brandishing the gun again, pointing it right into Aruna’s face. “We’ll not have any of that.”

Saito raises his hands and backs off, sitting back down. Aruna immediately starts to see to his bleeding nose.

There’s another crash, and the van jerks again. “Yusuf, what the fuck is that?” Eames asks, not taking his eyes of Saito.

 _“Projections,”_ Yusuf tells Eames in Mandarin; Saito knows only a handful of phrases, which makes it handy for talking over his head. _“They’re throwing things at us. I don’t know how, but they’re already suspicious of us.”  
_

 _“Get us out of here.”_

“What do you think I’m doing?” Yusuf asks in English.

That’s when the gunfire starts.

* * *

“Shit,” Mal says, when she sees the van’s windows blown out. She throws the car into gear, about to ride in, when there’s a horrid rumble.

The car is thrown into a spin by the force of the freight train.

“What the fuck?!” Fischer shouts in the back. “Who put a fucking freight train in downtown Chennai?”

“That wasn’t in the design,” Ariadne answers, looking at Mal.

Mal feels the sickening weight of dread in her gut. The thunder of the train going past doesn’t quite drown out the explosions of gunfire ahead of them. She puts the car in reverse and peels out, heading for the end of the train.

* * *

Yusuf is cursing in Urdu, shooting out the shattered windshield at armed men. Eames has one hand on Saito’s shoulder, keeping him and Aruna down, and is shooting out the back.

Saito is militarized. They are, quite possibly, fucked. And it is his fault for not seeing this before.

A red sedan flies past them, crashing into an SUV, and sending it spinning into the rifle-wielding soldier that had pinned them down with gunfire. Eames recognizes Mal’s driving as she reverses into a tight turn, tossing a grenade out the window and into another car.

Eames fights for balance as Yusuf burns out of there, following her. “I am fucking retiring after this,” Yusuf shouts. “No more of this bullshit.”

“You and me both. You all right?” Eames asks.

“Bloody windshield cut my face,” Yusuf answers, wiping at his forehead. “You?”

“Not a scratch.”

“Damn your luck,” Yusuf mutters. “Are the passengers dead? They seem rather quiet.”

Eames hauls Saito up onto the seat, freezing when he sees blood on his clothes.

“Where are you hit?” Eames says.

“I’m not,” he says. He sounds like he’s in shock, so Eames starts patting him down. “Get off me!” Saito shouts, pushing his hands away. “Help her!”

Eames blinks dumbly, then looks down at the floor of the van.

Aruna has one hand pressed against her side. Blood is seeping out between her fingers.

“She needs to go to the hospital,” Saito says urgently. “Please.”

Aruna looks up at him, then nods once, barely. If Arthur can keep his head -- and his forge -- while bleeding out from a shot to the gut, Eames reasons, so can he.

Eames swallows, and says, voice hoarse, “She’ll go when we have what we came for. Put pressure on the wound, if you want her to live,” Eames says, then turns back to Yusuf.

“ETA?” he asks.

“A couple minutes at most, unless we get ambushed again.” Yusuf glances back at Saito and Aruna. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” Eames says. “Drive faster.”

* * *

They pull into a warehouse down by the port. Eames jumps out and pulls the doors shut behind them, then jogs back to the car in time to see Yusuf pulls a struggling, hooded Saito out of the van. “Help him,” he directs Fischer, shoving the man towards them. Between the two of them, they hustle Saito through a doorway and into another room.

Mal is on Eames the second Saito’s out of earshot. “What the fuck happened--”

“Yell at me in a second, we have bigger problems.” He opens the door and pulls Aruna out of the van.

“Oh, no,” Mal says, her eyes going wide.

“Oh, yes. Now get out of the fucking way. Arthur, darling, if you could hold the forge until I set you down...”

“I could hold it this long, you idiot,” Arthur says in Aruna’s voice. “I’m not going to let it go now.”

“You’re just so light like this,” Eames says, trying to keep his tone easy. “Much easier to carry.”

“Getting lighter by the second,” Arthur says, pointing at the blood spatters on the ground.

Eames eases her down onto a table, then pulls off his sweater. When he looks again, it’s Arthur on the table, pale and bleeding and in pain. The sight makes him freeze, until feels a small hand on his arm, and turns to see Ariadne.

“I can help,” she says. She looks pale and worried, but entirely calm. “Get me the first aid kit.”

Eames turns to fetch it, but Mal is already there, holding it out. “What the hell happened back there?” she says.

“We were ambushed,” he says, grabbing the kit from her and passing it to Ariadne. “Saito’s obviously been militarized.”

“Obviously?” Mal shouts. “Then why the hell didn’t you know that beforehand?”

“It should have shown in the research,” Eames says tightly. “I don’t know how I missed it--”

“What does that mean," Ariadne asks, “That Saito’s been militarized?”

“An extractor’s shown him how to defend himself against unwanted visitors in his dreams,” Eames explains. “Which means we’re facing armed, trained projections.”

“The projections were onto us from the moment we arrived,” Yusuf says, coming back into the room with Fischer. “I thought they seemed strange, but I put it down to paranoia.”

“Where the hell were you, anyway?” Eames asks Mal. “You were supposed to be on our six.”

“We got caught behind a train,” Mal says.

Eames looks at her, narrowing his eyes. “A train, Mal?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Fischer asks.

“It does matter, you idiot,” Mal spits at him. “We’re not prepared for this kind of violence.”

“Jesus, Mal,” Eames says. “We’ve dealt with sub-security before.”

“Deal with it?” Mal screams, then points at Arthur. “He’s _dying_!”

“So put me out of my misery, and make a new plan,” Arthur whispers hoarsely.

Eames sighs, pulling out the Beretta from his shoulder holster. “You sure?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Arthur says.

“No,” Mal says.

Eames turns and glares at her. “He’s in agony, Mal, we need to wake him up.”

“He won’t wake up,” Mal says quietly.

The words hit Eames like a solid fist to the gut. “What do you mean, he won’t? We die in a dream, we wake up, that’s how it works.”

“Not with this serum,” Ariadne says. “The sedative is too strong, we can’t wake up that way.” She swallows. “I thought you all knew.”

Eames looks back at Mal. “And what happens if someone dies, Mal?”

“That person’s mind would drop into Limbo,” she says.

“What the fuck is Limbo?” Fischer asks.

“Raw, unconstructed dream space,” Eames says, not looking away from Mal. “A void, filled only by what's been left there by anyone on the team who's been there before. In this case, just Mal.”

“How long would we be stuck down there?” Fischer asks, voice brittle with panic.

“There’s no way to say,” Ariadne says.

“Guess, then!” Fischer demands hotly.

“Years, decades, it could be infinite,” Ariadne replies. She turns back to Arthur, wiping tears off her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Eames takes a step closer to Mal. “You knew the risks and didn’t tell us.”

“I didn’t know we’d be walking into a load of gunfire,” Mal says.

“Oh, fuck you, Mal,” Eames spits. “You’re not passing the blame onto me.”

“Sedation is the only way one can go three layers deep.” The words are weak, barely justified. She touches his lapel. "Eames--"

He shoves her hand off. “So you led us into a war zone with no way out?”

“There is a way out,” she says. She turns and looks at the rest of the crew. “The kick. The sedative leaves inner ear function intact. We push on, do the job as fast as possible, and get out using the kick.” She looks at Arthur, writhing weakly in pain. “And we do it fast.”

Eames takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. He holsters his gun, because otherwise, he’d be too too tempted to shoot Mal. Non-lethally, _of course._

He picks up Arthur’s hand, and touches his lips to it briefly. “Don’t drop into Limbo before I get back,” he says lightly.

Arthur smiles. His teeth are tinged pink. “I told you what I’d do if you kissed my hand.” He touches his fingers to Eames’ jaw. “Bang bang.”

“Funny,” he says, placing Arthur’s hand back on his chest.

He turns away, pulling his balaclava out of his coat pocket. “Yusuf. Let’s go have a chat with our guest, shall we?”


	13. Chapter 13

“If it’s money you want,” Saito says, when they pull of his hood, “I assure you, it’s yours.”

Eames shares a look with Yusuf. “And what if it’s not money we want?” Yusuf says.

Saito glares at both of them. “If you wanted to kill me, then you’ve had ample opportunity.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Eames says. “Not yet, at any rate.”

Saito looks at both of them, calm and angry. “In that case, there’s no reason we can’t negotiate.”

Eames squats down, until he’s level with the other man. “What if we don’t want to negotiate? What if we don’t want anything you could offer us?”

Saito meets his gaze levelly, unafraid. “Then I would wonder why you’d go through the trouble of kidnapping my companion and me.”

“As well you might. Tell me, Mr. Saito: are you afraid of dying?”

“Are you threatening me?”

Eames looks at him. “I’ll take that as a no. But there’s still the matter of your companion. Miss Aruna, I believe?”

Saito blanches. For the first time, his composure slips. “If you’ve done anything to her--”

“We don’t have to have to do a thing,” Yusuf says. “Just being in your company was enough to kill her, it seems.”

Saito swallows. “She’s dead?”

“Not yet,” Yusuf says lightly. “But it shouldn’t be long--”

“I will comply with whatever demands you make of me,” Saito says. “But only if she is taken to the hospital.”

Eames shares a look with Yusuf.

“Please,” Saito says, teeth gritted.

“Fair enough,” Yusuf says, and they both turn to leave.

“I need to see her first!” Saito cries, yanking on the handcuff around his wrists. “I won’t negotiate with you unless you let me speak with her.”

Yusuf glances over at Eames, and then says, “We’ll see.”

* * *

“I can give you something for the pain,” Ariadne says.

“In a militarized dream?” Arthur reminds her. “I can’t be stoned on morphine, I’ll be a dead man.”

Ariadne sighs. “Thought I’d try. You can’t... I don’t know, change into a body without a bullet wound?”

“Pain’s in the mind,” Arthur says. “My mind’s not going to forget that I’ve been shot.” Not when the bullet is still in there, lodged against one of his ribs. He can feel it every time he takes a breath, a crackling pain.

She frowns. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “You were right, when you tried to warn me.”

Arthur huffs a laugh. “I’m always right. Everyone seems to forget that, though.”

Ariadne nearly smiles at that. He likes her, Arthur realizes. She’s a lot tougher than he would have guessed.

“I’ve done what I can,” she says. “The rest is up to luck.”

Arthur doesn’t trust in luck, and never has. But there’s no point in telling Ariadne that, so he just nods.

Ariadne smiles at him a little. “I’m going to wash up. Mal,” she calls. “Sit with him.”

Mal comes into Arthur’s field of vision. She’s pale, arms wound tightly around her waist. “Arthur,” she says.

“Mal,” Arthur grits out. Through the haze brought on by pain and blood loss, he can see that she looks wrecked. “You look almost as bad as I feel.”

She laughs, a little hysterically. “The pain won’t be as bad in the lower levels. I can promise you that.”

“That’s a comfort, I guess.” He takes a shallow breath. “So. Limbo. You want to tell me about it?”

She looks away, at Ariadne, who’s washing the blood off her hands. Ariadne returns her gaze, then looks back down at the sink, her small, red-stained hands.

“Come on, Mal,” Arthur says. “You owe me this much.”

She shakes her head. “I owe you much more. I’m so sorry. I never meant--”

“Mal,” he says urgently. They don’t have time for her all-encompassing guilt.

“It was that contract with Stanford University,” she says. “You know how happy we were to get legitimate work.”

“I remember,” Arthur says. Dom had called him with the news; a long-term research contract with a prestigious university, a house in Palo Alto, a good school district and free childcare. Domestic bliss, a world away from the shadowy espionage they usually did. Arthur had been happy for them, and a little envious. Their life wasn’t one he was privy to anymore.

“We were exploring. Dreams within dreams. But we didn’t understand, the way the mind turns hours into years when you’re so far down.”

“Idiots, both of you,” Arthur mutters.

Mal laughs jaggedly. “Oh, we were. Blindly stumbling down rabbit holes, letting ourselves fall further and further in. No compass, no map, no trail out. We were trapped before we realized what had happened, where we were.”

"Limbo." Arthur swallows, then asks a question he’s not sure he wants to know the answer to. “How long were you down there?”

Mal pauses. “Fifty years, more or less.”

Arthur coughs. “Jesus, Mal.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she says. “We built cities, an entire world for ourselves. When we got bored with that, we started building from memories. Our first apartment, our childhood homes...”

“Your memories, Mal, that’s--”

Arthur jerks as a shooting, searing pain rips through him. Unthinkingly, he grabs at Mal’s hand, squeezing it until the pain passes. When he opens his eyes, Mal is watching him calmly, squeezing his hand back. She reaches forward with her other hand, and he feels the cool touch of her fingers as she smooths back his hair.

He has a momentary urge to snatch his hand back, push her away -- he doesn’t need to comforted, damn it, not by her -- but then finds himself relaxing into the touch. _My god,_ Arthur realizes, _I don’t have the energy to hate her anymore._

“Dangerous, I know," Mal says softly. "It didn’t matter, though. After a while, I forgot-- no, I _chose_ to forget that our world wasn’t real.”

Ariadne’s voice startles them both. “How did you wake up?”

Mal looks back at Arthur. He watches her as she smooths his hair back again. “Dom knew it wasn’t real. He never forgot, but he had to make me remember. He became possessed by the idea, that we had to wake up.”

“How?” Ariadne asks.

“Dom was an extractor,” Mal says. “And we were in my dream.”

“What are you saying?” Arthur says, staring at her. He’s not sure he wants to hear this. Dom was his _friend._

Mal pulls back her hand. “What else could he do? He broke into deepest corner of my mind--”

“Mal,” Arthur says, in a hoarse whisper.

“And planted the smallest, simplest idea.”

“Stop it,” Arthur demands. He feels something, just under the skin of his chest, a pressure building up against his heart.

“That the world wasn’t real. That death was the only way out.”

All the months of grief, the pain over losing not just Dom but both of them, his mentors and best friends and the closest thing he had to family, all of it forces its way up Arthur’s spine in a burst. He shoves Mal away, nearly knocking her over. The movement hurts, pain ripping along the path the bullet took through his side, but even that is distant, dull compared to this sharp, sickening ache in his gut.

“So you killed him for it,” Arthur spits. “He violated your mind, and you stabbed him in the heart. Jesus, the two of you fucking deserved each other. True love, right there.”

She doesn’t even try to deny it. Mal just looks at him like Arthur’s just torn her heart out of her chest, but no, fuck her and her epic tragic romance. Fuck it all.

“What the hell is going on?” Eames says from the doorway. His eyes look from Arthur to Mal, mouth set in a grim line.

Arthur looks away from him, towards the wall.

“It’s fine,” Mal says eventually, her voice rough. “What’s happening?”

“Saito’s insisting on seeing Aruna. Refuses to negotiate with us until he sees she’s alive.” Arthur turns. Eames is gazing at him, worried. “Are you up for this?”

Arthur nods, then grits his teeth and shifts into Aruna’s skin. It hurts, the trauma more intense in her smaller body. “Get him in here,” Arthur says. “Quickly.”

“All right,” Eames says. Arthur can see that he wants to touch him, put a hand on him, but Eames thankfully maintains his distance. “Everyone else, clear out.”

Mal picks herself up slowly, helped by Ariadne, and leaves. Eames follows them, looking at Arthur over his shoulder before he goes.

* * *

Arthur has always hated doing death-bed confessions.

It’s an ethical thing, a line he doesn’t like to cross. Brings up bad memories, unpleasant thoughts. Forging a dying loved one has brought on an existential crisis more than once.

It’s a little bit easier this time, because the pain is real, the fear is there: _there’s every chance,_ he thinks to himself, during the brief moment he’s alone, _that I won’t make it out of this alive._

As Saito opens the door, gazing fearfully at Aruna, Arthur lets his own fears become hers. Aruna reaches for Saito’s hand, takes a small measure of comfort in its warmth and familiar feel against her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He’s trembling with emotion, with fear and something else, some deeper emotion. “There are not words to adequately express--”

“Youshiro,” she whispers. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I will find out. Whatever they want, they can have it. And when this is over, I swear to you, I will take my revenge on them. Whatever it takes, they will suffer for what they have done.”

It’s guilt that’s fluttering around him, plucking at the edges of his control. Aruna licks her lips. “But what good will suffering do?” she asks.

“I-- what?”

“Whose pain will it alleviate?” Aruna asks. “Not mine, not now.”

Saito looks at Aruna like she has just delicately and skillfully torn open his chest.

“Karma is a wheel,” Aruna says. “We all turn on it. If I die--”

Saito opens his mouth to say something, and Aruna squeezes his hand with a burst of strength to silence him.

“If I die, it is not up to you to take on the burden of my death.”

Saito is breathing heavily through his nose. She can feel his pulse, racing, in their entwined fingers. “I am not that kind of man,” he says at length. “I will not let this lie.”

Aruna takes a pained, shallow breath. “Then you will be the one who suffers for it,” she says.

“I am prepared for that,” Saito says.

“I know,” she answers. “Because you already suffer for someone else. I’ve always seen it, but haven’t known why. Not until now.”

There’s a moment when it seems that Saito will break open; his jaw works, he looks away and blinks rapidly. But no, he’s too strong and stubborn for that, and composes himself after a moment. “How did this happen?” he asks. “How could I have been so...” He trails off.

Arthur, the immutable part of him that doesn’t change no matter whose skin he’s wearing, briefly panics. He recognizes that questioning, suspicious glare on Saito’s face: the situation doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t scan the way it should. He’s beginning to suspect that this is a dream.

Aruna interprets Arthur’s sudden apprehension as a spasm of pain. She clenches at Saito’s fist and bites back a moan.

Saito is instantly focused on her again. “I promise,” he says. “I will do whatever I must to get you to safety.”

“I know you will,” she says, pressing their hands against her chest. “I have faith in you, Youshiro.”

He doesn’t smile, exactly, but his expression softens around the eyes. He touches her jaw with his other hand. “As well you should,” he says.

Arthur can’t help but admire his determination. He only hopes that he and the rest of the team are equal to it.

* * *

Mal stares at her phone, willing it to ring.

 _Why so silent, Dom?_ she wonders. He called her to warn her, so why not call now, to rub her face in the mess she’s made? Call her out on her hubris? Why not show up now, when she’d be a willing victim? She’s tired of fighting, and there’s nobody here now that would try to save her from whatever violence Dom would inflict on her, so _where is he?_

“Hey,” Ariadne says softly.

Mal doesn’t look up. “Yes? What is it?”

Ariadne sits next to her. “Phillipa and James.”

Mal blinks. “What?”

“Those are their names, right? Phillipa and James. Your kids.”

“Yes, why?”

“They’re why you’re doing this. You told me to remind you, if you lose your resolve.”

Mal sighs. “I haven’t--”

“You may have convinced the rest of this team to push on, but they don’t know, do they?”

“Know what?” Mal asks, putting her phone away.

“That Dom is bursting through your subconscious. They don’t know what he’s like, what he’s capable of.”

“I told you, they’ve all seen him--”

“On a job, you told me. They haven’t seen him like I have, though. None of them know what they might be up against.”

Mal rubs at her eyes. How embarrassing, that she’s being forced to listen to a pep talk from a girl ten years her junior.

“Mal, your guilt defines him. It’s giving him power. At some point, if you want to pull off this job, you’ll have to confront him, and forgive yourself.”

“It’s too late for that,” Mal says. “I’m far past forgiveness.”

“Yeah?” she says, angrily. “Then think of it this way. If you let your guilt drag you down, we’re all going to pay the price. You may be fine with spending another eternity in Limbo with your dead, evil projection of a husband, but I sure as _fuck_ am not.”

Mal rubs her face as Ariadne stomps away. Fuck her life.

“Mon dieu,” Eames says, coming out of the van, where he has presumably been listening to their conversation. “You may have met your match, Madame.”

“ _Vie de merde,_ ” she mutters, under her breath.

“I knew there was a reason I liked her.” He hands her something, a leather wallet. “It’s Saito’s. Take a look in the smallest pocket.”

Mal opens the wallet, fishes around in the pockets, and then draws out a small, folded paper. She unfolds it to find a burst of color; a poppy, drawn in red ink. Beneath it, a haiku:

>   
> _In this world  
>  we walk on the roof of hell,  
> gazing at flowers._   
> 

“Useful?” Eames asks.

“Could be,” Mal says, gazing at it. “I think--”

A gunshot shatters through one of the windows. Eames pushes her down onto the gritty floor as more shots follow, breaking the rest of the windows.

“Projections are closing in,” Eames says unnecessarily.

“Naturally,” Mal says. “We need to go.”

Eames pushes himself off the floor, and runs to the other room. Mal folds the paper with its poem and puts it her breast pocket, nestled against her heart. She takes a breath. “Ariadne! Fischer!” she calls. “We’re leaving!”

"What is it?" Fischer calls, running over. "What's happening?"

"Shut up and get in the van," Ariadne says, shoving him through the open door, as another gun shot hits the metal warehouse door.

"Little help!" Eames calls, as he brings a struggling, hooded Saito out into the main room.

Ariadne tosses a glass bottle at Mal. "Sedative," she says by way of explanation. "Three or four drops should do it."

Mal sends a quick prayer of thanks to her father for leading her to this pragmatic, practical girl, as she squeezes a few drops onto the front of Saito's hood. Saito collapses in Eames' arms, and he hauls the unconscious man into the van, strapping him into a seat.

Yusuf comes out with Arthur, who's bloodstained and pale, but wearing an expression of determination.

"What did you learn?" Mal asks, as they come closer to the van.

"He's guilty, sickeningly so," Arthur says. "I could see it. Something's been gnawing at him for a long time."

Mal nods. "Good."

"That's helpful?" Fischer asks.

"The stronger the issues," Mal says, "the more powerful the catharsis. The better chance we have of succeeding."

"We still don't know what the issues are," Eames points out as he pulls out an grenade launcher from the back of the van. "Any ideas on how to shed some light on them? It's not like we've got time to do deep regression therapy on him," he adds, tapping Saito's leg.

"There's something else," Arthur says, as he collapses onto one of the van's seats. "I think he suspects he's dreaming."

Mal stares at him. "You're sure?"

"No," Arthur says, and coughs. "But neither is he. Wouldn't take much to convince him though."

"Fuck," Eames says.

"We're screwed, aren't we?" Ariadne asks.

"No," Mal says, buckling herself in.

"Oh, we aren't?" Eames asks. "Do enlighten me then, because from where I'm standing--"

"We'll run Mr. Charles in the next level," Mal says.

Arthur and Eames stare at her. Fischer looks startled, as though he's suddenly remembered something.

Eames finally speaks up. "Are you insane?"

"Clearly," Arthur says. "We already knew that, though."

"Saito's been militarized," Mal says. "He knows about dreamsharing, and if he already suspects that he's asleep--"

"So we tell him instead?" Eames demands. "And let his subconscious tear us to pieces?"

"It's doing a fine job of that already," Mal replies. "It's our only chance."

Arthur's staring at her, his eyes hard and probing. "All right. Let's do it."

Eames is looking back and forth, from Mal to Arthur. "You're both fucking crazy. Fine. Let me just go clear the road for us, and then we'll continue on our path of folly..."

"Arthur?" Mal asks, when Eames is firing out the door. "Can you still do the forgery--"

"Pain's in the mind, right?" Arthur says. "And it won't be so bad on the next level. I'll be fine."

Yusuf starts the van and starts creeping forward. "Don't go too Evel Knieval behind the wheel," Ariadne cautions him from the back. "There's still oneiric resonance between the levels."

"Evel Knieval rode motorcycles," Yusuf points out as Eames gets back in the van and buckles up, having caused enough explosions to clear them a path.

"Don't worry," Eames says to the rest of the team. "He's been practicing on Mario Kart, haven't you Yusuf?"

"I'm going to push you out onto the road the second you're asleep," Yusuf says, and Eames snorts as he inserts the IV into his wrist.

"Everyone ready?" Yusuf asks, taking a quick look back. His hand hovers over the button on the PASIV next to him. "Sweet dreams, then."


	14. Chapter 14

"Do you know what the most resilient parasite is, Saito-san?" Mal asks smoothly.

Arthur, wearing the ancient skin of Saito's grandfather, raises an eyebrow. "I have a feeling we are not talking of a medical problem."

Mal smiles. "Indeed, we're not."

"Then do enlighten us," he says, waving his hand to include his grandson, standing behind his shoulder.

"It's an idea." Mal takes a breath and lets the words float between them. This was always Dom's speech, and the words come back to her, sink like barbs into her heart. He'd formed this speech after a particular argument they always had, and had never resolved.

"An idea?" the younger Saito asks, earning him a stern glare from his grandfather.

"Yes,” Mal replies, turning her gaze to him. “Resilient, contagious; it can grow like a weed in the mind, impossible to eradicate. One could ignore it, try to forget, but it will always remain. Haunting you from the shadowy corners."

"For someone like you to steal," the elder Saito says.

Mal shrugs modestly. "Who better to protect you from theft, than a thief? And I assure you, I am the best of thieves."

The elder Saito snorts, then laboriously pushes himself to his feet. He waves away the younger Saito's offer of an arm, grabbing his carved wooden cane instead. "Madam," he says. "I'll consider your offer. In the meantime, enjoy the party."

Accompanied by a bodyguard, he opens the sliding door onto the main floor: Mal catches a view of the lavish party, glamorous guests, the saturated colors that mark this as Eames' dream.

"Youshiro!" she calls, as the younger Saito prepares to follow his grandfather out. "Could I talk to you a moment?"

Saito blinks, then turns back to her. "Of course, Miss..."

"Dionne," Mal reminds him. "I wanted to ask what you thought of my offer."

"With all due respect," Saito says stiffly, "my grandfather will never take you up on your offer."

"He doesn't trust me," Mal says.

"My grandfather believes that thieves have no honor. Trusting someone with no honor brings only pain and shame."

"And without honor, there is nothing, am I right?"

Saito looks at her, gazing at her face with a cautious, searching look, then nods slowly. "Have we met before, Miss Dionne?"

"Do I seem familiar to you?" Mal asks, returning his gaze.

***

Upstairs, on the mezzanine balcony, Ariadne squeezes Robert's arm as the projections go quiet.

"What's happening?" Robert asks quietly.

"Saito suspects that he's dreaming. The projections are looking for the dreamer."

"Which in this case, is who?" Robert asks, nervously tugging at the collar of his tux.

Ariadne takes her hand from his arm and starts digging through her handbag. "Weren't you paying attention during the planning sessions? Eames has this level."

"I'm a busy man," Robert counters. "I'm too used to having an assistant keeping details straight for me."

Ariadne snorts as she pulls out her cell phone. "Not like it matters anyway. Whatever plan we did have went right out the window when the bullets started flying."

They both look up as a shudder goes through the building. "What the hell was that? An earthquake?"

Ariadne shakes her head. "Physical-oneiric resonance between the dream levels."

"Which means what?"

"It means Yusuf's driving like a maniac." The building shudders again. Ariadne grabs Robert, trying to keep herself steady on her high heels. Damn Eames, dressing her like this. He couldn't have dreamt up some flats?

"We need to find Eames," Robert says.

"I'm calling him now," Ariadne says, dialing, but a voice behind them interrupts her.

"Mr. Fischer? Miss Ariadne?" a young Japanese man says, bowing. "Mr. Saito requests your presence in his study. Please follow me."

***

"Do you feel that, Youshiro?" Mal asks, as the floor shivered beneath their feet. There's a noise like thunder, and suddenly, rain is splattering against the windows. "And what strange weather we're having."

Saito is breathing heavily. "What is the meaning of this?" he asks. "What's happening?"

"Your grandfather thinks subconscious security is a waste of time, but you don't, do you?" She leans in closer. "You didn't. You've already been trained."

Saito swallows. "I--"

"Think. Think of where you are. How did you get here?"

Mal can hear a glass shatter in the other room. The projections will be looking for her team now, she can only hope that they've gotten themselves somewhere safe.

"I don't--"

"Think to the last time you saw your grandfather. It was when--"

"He was dying," Saito says. "Sixteen years ago." He looks up. "I'm dreaming."

Mal takes a step closer, stumbling as the floor begins to rumble in earnest now, as though the mansion were trying to shiver apart. "Take a deep breath. Accept that we're in a dream. I'm here to protect you. Remember your training."

After a tense moment, the rumbling fades. Mal takes a deep breath, and sees Saito echo it.

"This isn't real," he says.

"No."

"You're not real."

Mal takes his hand and leads him to a seat. "I'm a projection of your subconscious. You're in danger, and I'm meant to protect you in case an extractor pulls you into a dream."

"Is that what's happening?" Saito asks.

"I believe so." Mal spots movement in the corner of her eye, the flicker of a shadow beyond the sliding door. "We need to move."

***

Ariadne, with her arm still hooked around Fischer's elbow, follows the young Japanese man as sedately as she can. She can feel Fischer practically thrumming with nerves, though he seems to be keeping his shit together remarkably well, all things considered.

"In here," the man says, opening an ornately carved door and ushering them through it into a study. There's an imposing desk, shelves of books lining the walls.

Standing at a window is an elderly Japanese man, wrinkled and nearly bald, staring out at the full moon hovering over the black ocean. He does not turn around at their entrance.

Ariadne shares a look with Fischer. Fischer opens his mouth to speak, when another door opens. Eames, wearing a waiter's cheap tie and jacket, stumbles in, pushed forward by another security guard.

"We found him, sir," the second security guard says. Eames shoots a rebellious look at the gathered group, and then collapses on a chair.

"Thank you," says the old man. "Please leave us."

The two security guards share a quick glance, but don't move. The old man half turns from the window, and says, "I will call for you if I need your assistance. Thank you."

It's a clear dismissal, but the guards still hesitate before leaving, locking the doors behind them. Ariadne watches them go, and when she turns back, Arthur is standing where the old man was.

"You're looking a bit perkier," Eames says, smiling faintly.

"Feeling it, too," he says. He doesn't smile, but there's something humorous in his expression as he regards Eames. It fades when he turns to regard Ariadne and Fischer. "Hope you don't mind that I pulled you out of the party. "

"Not at all," Fischer says, adjusting his bow tie. "Now, for those of us who aren't in the know, would you mind sharing exactly who or what 'Mr. Charles' is?"

Eames and Arthur glance at each other. "Mr. Charles was an old scam that Dom used to run," Arthur says after a pause. "It was a gambit that turned the mark against his own subconscious."

"How?" asks Fischer.

"By telling him he's dreaming, and that Mr. Charles is there to protect him," Eames explains. As if on cue, there's another rumble beneath their feet, and a sharp discordant note from one of the string players in the quartet. "Or Mrs. Charles, in this case. It has the unfortunate side effect of attracting a lot of attention to all of us."

"Ah," Fischer says, somewhat delicately. "Which is why we're all sequestered away in here, I suppose."

"We're in here because Mal needs time alone with Saito," Eames says. "And the four of us need to formulate our own game plan."

Arthur sits down in the chair behind the massive desk. "What is this, a mutiny against Mal?"

Eames looks at Arthur. "Arthur, love, you're bleeding out. It's not like she's earned your loyalty."

"My loyalty isn't a factor here," Arthur growls. "I'm not feeling particularly charitable towards her at the moment, I just want to get this fucking job done right."

"So do I," Eames says. "Are you sure Mal's the best choice to do it?"

"You think you are instead?" Arthur asks, his tone sharp.

"I wouldn't have gotten one of my crew shot in the chest."

Arthur stands suddenly, mouth open to shout, then seems to stagger, planting both hands on the desk and breathing hard through his nose. Eames is at his side in an instant, anger forgotten in the moment.

“Arthur--”

“I’m fine,” Arthur insists, even though he’s pale as a sheet, looking ready to faint.

"Why don't we give you two a moment?" Ariadne asks. She tugs on Fischer's elbow, dragging him out onto a small balcony that overlooks the ocean.

"Jesus, what a mess," she says. Then, suddenly, finds herself laughing.

"What is it?" Fischer asks. "Why are you laughing?"

"I was just thinking," Ariadne said, still chuckling. "Even though we might be about to fall into Limbo and spend the rest of our lives as comatose vegetables, I'm still happier to be here than in fucking Lafievre's dream den."

Fischer smiles thinly, all the indulgence that he can apparently scrape up.

"Sorry," Ariadne says. "Guess it's only funny to me."

"What do you think the outcome of this going to be?" Fischer asks, nodding back into the room.

Ariadne shakes her head, feeling her momentary humor slip away. "I don't know. I don't honestly know which would be better."

"Nothing good could come from a power struggle right now," Fischer says. He takes out a silver-plated cigarette case and pulls out a cigarette. He offers her one, and Ariadne takes one. Smoking's not really her thing, but it's not like she's going to get emphysema from smoking in a dream. Fischer lights her cigarette, then his own.

"I hired Mal Cobb," Fischer says, "because I was sure that she could pull it off, and because she had nothing to lose. Because I could tell she'd sacrifice everything to do it."

"Maybe she thought she could," Ariadne says, thinking back to how Mal was with Arthur on the first dream level. "But I'm not so sure anymore."

***

"Are you all right?" Eames asks, his hand on Arthur's back.

"No," Arthur admits. The pain isn't as bad, an echo of what it was on the first level of the dream, but he can feel an itch under his skin, an unpleasant pounding in the back of his head like a migraine, and it's hard to catch his breath. When he was a teenager, Arthur had pneumonia; this feels similar, with a familiar sharpness to each inhalation.

"Arthur--" Eames begins.

Arthur holds up a hand. "I'll be fine. I can handle it."

Eames sighs. "Obstinate bastard. At least sit down."

Arthur almost remains standing out of spite, but really, sitting down is the better option right now. "Tell me what you're thinking."

Eames swallows. "Mal's lost it."

"She lost it a long time ago," Arthur replies, thinking of her confession, what Dom did to her.

"Well, _yes,_ but not like this. I've been working with her for the last six months, and I don't dispute that she's crazy, but this..."

"There's nothing we can do," Arthur says. “You know that, don’t you?”

"What the hell are you talking about?" Eames says, incredulous. “Between the two of us, we could--”

"We're two levels down in a militarized subconsciousness. We can't jump ship and wake ourselves up. One wrong step, we'll all end up in Limbo."

"I'm aware of that, thanks," Eames spits.

"Then why are you talking about taking command of this job?" Arthur asks. "I know you, Eames. You're a a gifted extractor in your own right, but we can't mutiny and expect it not to go to shit."

Eames blinks, taken back by the seemingly offhand compliment, before refocusing on their argument. "This isn't a bloody war campaign, Arthur--"

"That's exactly what it is, and you know it."

Eames glares balefully at the sliding door, where the sounds of the party are leaking through. "You know how hairy the next level is going to be," he says. At Arthur's nod, he asks, "Do you really want to go in there with Mal, our mark, a CEO tourist, and a chemist on her first real job?"

Arthur sighs, and pushes himself out of the chair, standing in front of Eames. "Are you asking if I'd rather have you watching my back? Because you know the answer to that, Eames."

Almost unconsciously, Eames reaches for him, and Arthur closes the gap between the two of them, sliding into the open space between Eames' thighs to kiss him. Eames pulls him in gently, wary of causing him anymore pain, but kisses him hungrily. This isn't like the cautious kiss they shared in Chennai, tentative and unsure. It's tainted with worry, made desperate by circumstance, with how little time they might actually have.

"There's nobody else I'd trust to watch over me," Arthur says when he pulls away. "It has to be you on this level."

"Fuck," Eames whispers, then runs a hand through his hair. "If you fall into Limbo, you stubborn bastard, I promise I'm going to draw a dick on your face before coming in after you."

Arthur laughs, remembering how he'd done that to Eames on their second job together.

"And it'll be in permanent marker instead of Mal's eyeliner," Eames clarifies.

"I can live with that," Arthur says.

* * *

Mal can sense the two security guards tailing them. She directs Saito towards the balcony on the second floor, away from the main part of the house where the party is still going on. The two security guards follow them.

Outside, Mal shoves Saito to one side and pulls out her gun, flattening herself against the door.

"What are you--" Saito starts to ask, just before the two men come through the door. Mal squeezes off two shots before either of them can turn to see her.

"What are you doing?" Saito says, in a low, horrified tone, watching the blood pool on the wooden deck.

"These men are either projections, or members of an extraction team. Either way, they don't matter." She rolls one of the bodies over, pulling the gun out of the holster. She hands it to Saito, and starts patting down the man's pockets.

She freezes as she hears the gun's safety click off. She turns her head slowly, expecting to stare down the barrel of the gun. Instead, she sees Saito raise the gun to his own temple.

"If this is a dream, I can shoot myself to wake up, yes?"

Mal puts up her hand. "They may have you under sedation. Dying might not wake you up, it could make you fall into a deeper level of the dream. We can't take that risk."

Saito gazes at her, frank and assessing. Then he nods and thumbs the safety back into place. "What are we going to do?

Mal breathes a sigh of relief, then refocuses. "We need to figure out what they want. What do you remember before this dream?"

Saito's brow furrows as he thinks. "I don't--"

"It's like trying to remember a dream after you've waken up, I know," Mal says encouragingly.

"I remember rain. Gunshots and-- Aruna!" Saito said. He grasped the railing of the balcony, as if he might fall without its support. "She was shot in the chest, she might be dying."

"What did they want? What were they trying to get from you?" Mal asked, placing an urgent hand on his arm.

"They wouldn't tell me!" Saito says heatedly. "They said they weren't interested in money or a ransom."

"They probably want some kind of information," Mal replied, putting a reassuring arm on his hand. Then, as if a thought just occurred to her, she kneels down by the closer of the two dead men and pat him down. She concentrates, pushing at the fabric of the dream a little, and feels it give way under her intention. Now, in one of the pockets of the dead guard's coat, she can feel a scrap of paper materialize in her fingers.

She withdraws and unfolds it: on it are printed the haiku and the drawing of a red poppy. The ink is darker than it was in the first dream level, the hue of drying blood. She handes it to Saito, who takes it with trembling fingers.

"How did they get this?" he asks. He swallows, then looks out at the ocean.

Mal doesn't answer. She waits for him to speak again, to work out whatever conclusion he needs to come to.

"The man who wrote this," Saito says, rubbing his fingers unconsciously over the paper. "He's dead. He's been dead for the last twenty years."

Mal leans in close. "Time doesn't matter to a hungry ghost," she says. "It doesn't soothe their restlessness."

"No," Saito agrees. "But what does this mean? What does this have to do with the kidnappers?"

"I don't know," she says softly. "But we can find out."

"How?" he asks, and Mal feels the familiar satisfaction of having a mark completely in her thrall.

"If you were controlling a dream, who would you use as your puppet? Someone familiar, yes?" she prompts. "Someone in authority? Someone you once trusted, even loved?"

Saito's nostrils flare. "My grandfather."

Working with Arthur has always been like dancing with a skilled partner, both of them responding to the slightest pull or twist of the other's body. She prays that this still holds true.


	15. Chapter 15

"Are you decent?" Fischer asks dryly, as he slides the door back open.

Eames ponders, for a moment, what it would be like to punch a billionaire in the face. He thinks it would feel pretty damn gratifying.

"What is it?" Arthur asks. He's moved away from Eames, but not much.

"There's a problem," Ariadne says, coming through the door after Fischer. She jerks her head back towards the balcony. Her face is pale and frightened, and she's more ruffled than Eames has ever seen her.

"Don't tell me Saito has ninja projections, or something," Eames says, as he makes his way around the desk, heading to the door.

"It's not one of Saito's projections," Ariadne says quietly. It's enough to stop Eames in his tracks, suddenly understanding the reason behind Ariadne's pale face and reined-in panic. Eames glances back at Arthur, to see his reaction, but Arthur's face is shuttered, a brick wall.

Eames suppresses another burst of anger -- can he and Arthur not have a fucking _minute_ to themselves without the ghost of Dom intruding on them? -- and then moves out onto the balcony.

Yusuf designed this layer of the dream to have a number of different mezzanines and balconies, all connected by winding, paradoxical staircases that looped back on each other. He also gave this balcony, on the highest tier of the castle, a commanding view of all the others.

A hundred feet away, Dominic fucking Cobb is staring mournfully out at the crashing ocean waves. Eames is tempted to conjure a rifle with a high-powered scope, and blow the bastard's brains out. It'd be too, too satisfying.

Of course, if he did that, all of Saito's projections would tear them to pieces. Bollocks. Eames goes back inside.

"Is it--" Arthur begins to ask.

"Yeah," Eames says shortly. "I'll go. See if I can get to him before Mal comes across him."

"Or vice versa," Fischer adds, like the prat that he is.

"Yes," Eames grits out. "Or that. Do you have a plan, yet?" he asks Arthur.

"Stay in grandpa Saito's skin. Improvise. Try not to get killed."

Eames raises his eyebrows, just a little. "Was that advice for me, or a goal for yourself?"

There's a ghost of a smile lurking around Arthur's mouth. "Both," he says. He ghosts his fingers across Eames' wrist, a fleeting touch.

"I'll find you when I'm done," Eames says, and Arthur nods.

* * *

"What will we do?" Saito asks, considering the scrap of paper in his hand.

Mal stands, slipping the gun into the small clutch purse she's carrying. "Find him. See if we can find out what he wants. I have agents looking for him already."

Saito looks up at that.

"Extractors rarely work alone," Mal explains, nodding at the two dead projections. "Why should I?"

She waits until Saito offers her his arm, and then they go back out into the party.

* * *

"What now?" Ariadne asks. She's resisting the urge to bite her fingernails, trying to tamp down the low panic that seeing Mal's dead husband made her feel.

Arthur furrows his brow, and absently rubs at chest, where the bullet had hit. "Mal's convincing Saito that someone is trying to extract from him. If I were in her shoes, I'd want a focal point for his paranoia. Something tangible."

"Like what?" Fischer asks.

"Like giving him someone he previously trusted, who's turned against him."

"You mean--"

"She'll tell him that his grandfather is part of an extraction team," Arthur says. "It's what I would do."

Arthur stands and walks back to the window, looking at his reflection. Then, so quickly that Ariadne has to blink hard before her mind will accept it, Saito's grandfather is standing there.

"See if you can find her," the old man says. "Watch for the projections. Do you remember the layout for this level?"

"Yes," Ariadne says, at the same time Fischer says, "Somewhat."

"Stay together, then," Arthur says. "Are you--"

Whatever he's about to say is interrupted by a coughing fit. The old man is nearly bent double by the force of his wheezing coughs, and Ariadne runs over, trying to steady him. She sees the spray of blood on the white handkerchief that he holds against his mouth.

She looks into the old man's eyes, but there's nothing of Arthur in them, nothing for her concern to really latch onto. He wipes his mouth neatly and asks, voice hoarse, "Are you armed?"

"Yes," Fischer says, patting his chest, where he presumably has a gun in a shoulder holster. Ariadne shakes her head. The old man opens a drawer and pulls out a petite silver-plated gun.

"This is the safety, and the hammer, and the magazine," he explains. "There are thirteen rounds in the magazine. Don't fire it unless you have to, it will bring the projections down on us all."

The hand holding the gun is trembling slightly. It could be a palsy on the old man's part, but Ariadne has the feeling that it isn't.

He looks at her sternly, and Ariadne takes the gun, fumbling at the safety catch before slipping it into her clutch bag.

"I'll be in here," he says. "Stay close. Whatever Mal does, follow her lead."

He sits down behind his desk, in a clear dismissal. Ariadne bites her lip against whatever she wants to stay, and goes out into the hallway, Fischer following her.

* * *

Eames liked Dom, when he was still alive. Dom had been the one to hire Eames when the Cobbs and Arthur began to build their name, take on the kind of complicated jobs that required a point man. Dom was a decent bloke: loyal, kind to those that were kind to him, unquestionably brilliant at what he did, and a good husband and friend. He was brilliant at Scrabble, awful at basketball, and an inspired dreamer.

It's hard to remember all that now, with Dom leaning against the railing of the balcony like James Bond's sandy-haired brother, all coiled menace and the promised destruction of a watchful predator.

Eames screws the suppressor onto his Beretta, aims for Dom's upper back, and squeezes the trigger twice. The first shot goes through Dom's spine, the second blows through his right lung. He drops with heavy grunt, unable to get the breath to scream.

No point in taking any unnecessary risks, after all. Mal usually doesn't let him kill the projections of Dom, but she's not here, and even if she were, Eames isn't in the mood to tackle the bastard with a rag full of chloroform again.

Eames walks cautiously over to where Dom is writhing on the ground. He's breathing in wet, shallow gasps, and there are flecks of blood on his lips.

"I'd apologize," Eames says, "but it'd be rather pointless, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah," Dom agrees. His arms twitch as Eames pats him down, removing the Glock from his shoulder holster and tossing it over the railing. Eames prefers guns with more style than the standard issue for drug dealers and gang-bangers. (Dom, in life, had rarely carried guns.)

"Glad we understand each other," Eames says. He slips his arms underneath Dom, wrinkling his nose as he feels the blood soaking his skin and black jacket.

"Do you know?" Dom says weakly, as Eames picks him up. "About that night? She hasn't told you, but you still know?"

"What you did to Mal, you mean, after you both woke up from Limbo?" Eames asks, as he walks to the edge of the balcony. He rests Dom’s weight on the wooden railing. Far below them, waves crash against a sandstone cliff. "No, she hasn't told me. But I've pieced it together."

"Don't tell Arthur," he says. "It would kill him."

Eames glares down at him. "It might have already, you bastard."

Eames pushes him over the edge, then turns away. He doesn't watch Dom fall, tempting though it is. He liked Dom once, but he’s not particularly fond of him or his projection these days.

* * *

The party seems to be petering out. Most of the glamorous projections that filled the great rooms are gone. The lights have dimmed, and the rooms are occupied by long shadows and dark corners. Distantly, Mal can still hear quiet conversation and faint music, emanating from another room.

“Quickly,” Mal says. Momentum is key in any con, and if she keeps Saito off-balance and paranoid, she can keep him in her power.

They meet Eames at the top of the stairs. She blinks when she catches sight of the blood staining the white cuffs of his shirt, and Saito blanches beside her.

“Anything we need to worry about?” she asks him, nodding at the stains.

“All taken care of,” he says evenly. His tone is unreadable, but Mal thinks he might be angry.

There’s no time to dwell on it, though. “Where’s the old man?”

“In his study. The rest of the team was watching the room, last I saw.”

Mal nods, and they travel up the stairs to the study, her and Eames flanking Saito, letting him lead them on.

Fischer and Ariadne are loitering out in the hallway, looking more like naughty children than criminals. Still, their presence pulls Saito up short.

“They’re with me as well,” she assures him. “Is he in there?”

Fischer nods. Eames and Mal both pull out their guns, and Eames puts his ear against the door. He meets her eyes, then stands back. At Mal’s nod, he kicks open the door.

The elder Saito has half-risen to his feet by the time Eames rushes in. Mal and Saito follow him, with Ariadne and Fischer bringing up the rear.

Eames pushes the old man back into his seat, holding a gun at his face.

“Youshiro? What is the meaning of this?” When he catches sight of Mal, his face turns stormy. “Has this thief stolen your wits?”

“Enough,” Saito says, his voice full of restrained fury. “You soil my grandfather’s memory by wearing his skin.”

“What are you talking about, boy?”

“I said enough,” Saito says. He pushes Eames aside, cocking his own gun and holding it to the man’s head in his place. “My grandfather has been dead for sixteen years. You have already kidnapped me, shot my companion, and broken into my mind. Do not insult my intelligence.”

The old man gazes up at Saito, at the finger resting against the trigger. Mal’s eyes dart between the two of them. She’s afraid to touch Saito, in case she startles him into firing.

“Saito,” she says softly. “We need him alive. Shooting him will accomplish nothing.”

“Killing him would accomplish nothing. Pain, on the other hand, can be quite motivating.” The hand holding the gun travels until it’s pointing at Arthur’s knee. “Drop this mask,” he demands.

The old man sighs, and then, with a slight bend in reality, shifts. He morphs slowly not into Arthur’s features, but into the familiar face of Dom.

She’s glad that Saito’s attention is all on Arthur, unable to spare any for her. Mal feels sick, violated, and infuriated, and it takes her a moment to collect herself. Arthur’s forgery is exact and nearly perfect: the slick blond hair, the faint stubble on his chin, the set of his jaw; Arthur had always known the two of them almost as well as they knew each other, and seeing this version of Dom, with eyes that aren’t cold or tinged with rage, sets off a deep ache in her gut.

“Have you known the whole time?” Dom’s voice says. “Or did she tell you?”

“That you’re here to steal something from me? Or that we’re actually asleep?” Saito sneers.

He throws Dom out of the chair, onto the ground. Mal can’t help it, she flinches.

“What do you want from me?” Saito demands. “What are you after?”

Dom stares up into his face calmly, ignoring the gun. “This world of dew is only a world of dew,” he says. “And yet, and yet--”

Saito looks, if anything, even angrier. “What do you know of it? What do you know of _him?_ ”

Dom stares up at him in defiant silence, and the tension in the room thickens even more. Mal startles when Eames clears his throat.

“There’s a PASIV in here,” he says, tapping the door of a cupboard.

“It’s possible they were planning on taking you under again,” Mal says softly.

“A dream within a dream?” Saito asks. He looks shaken, angry, in turmoil.

“So it would seem. If I may make a suggestion,” she says, trailing her fingers down Saito’s arm until she reaches his gun. “We do to him what he planned to do to you. Break into his mind, find out what he knows, what he was searching for.”

Saito’s gun hand gradually goes lax, and Mal slips the gun out of fingers. “Yes,” he says eventually. He sits down in his grandfather’s chair, and Mal nods to Eames. He sets the PASIV down on the desk, and pulls out several tubes. Mal rolls up Saito’s sleeve while Eames appears to do the same to Dom.

Saito looks pensive, vulnerable. “Why is this happening now? Why are all these ghosts stepping out of their graves?”

Mal looks into his eyes, and says, “Maybe they have been restless for too long, and are seeking peace.”

Saito looks at her with tired eyes. “Maybe we both are. I have avoided them for a long time.”

Mal recalls something Ariadne said in the previous dream level. “Our guilt can give shape to these spectres. Confronting them may be the only way to lay them to rest.”

Before Saito can respond, she injects him with the sedative. She holds his neck as his head goes loose and lax, and gently lowers him into a slouching position in the chair. Without turning around, she says, “He’s asleep. Drop the forge.”

Thankfully, when she turns around, it’s Arthur lying on the floor, with Eames crouched protectively over him.

“What was that?” Mal spits. “Some kind of petty revenge?”

Arthur looks at her steadily. “When have you ever known me to care about revenge, Mal?”

It’s true, of course. Other men, if their best friends had been murdered by their wives, seemingly in cold blood, would not have stopped until the woman’s body was in a shallow grave. Even when she pushed him into pulling a gun on her, he didn’t aim to kill, or even maim. She doesn’t know what Arthur wants, but revenge has never seemed to be it.

“Why then? Why would you do that to me?” Mal asks.

Arthur looks tired, worn out. “I couldn’t stay in Yorimasa’s skin without taking a bullet to the leg. I could have forged a stranger--”

“Why didn’t you then?” She has to keep her voice from trembling.

“There’s every chance that Dom will be in the next layer of the dream anyway. Saito will know to avoid him, at least.”

Mal swallows. It’s logical, but tell that to the churning in her gut. “What do you mean, every chance? He hasn’t--”

“He was here,” Eames says, cutting her off. “I dealt with him before he could cause trouble.”

Mal stares at the bloodstains on Eames’ cuffs and feels ill. She breathes through her nose for a moment, until she’s relatively sure that she’s not going to vomit. She knows that he spared her fresh heartache by doing -- whatever he did out of her sight, but it’s still Dom’s blood on his clothing.

“All right,” she says, when she’s able to speak again. “Thank you for-- for taking care of that, Eames.”

He looks back at her steadily, and she wishes, not for the first time, that she could read Eames the way she can read other men. Even after years of knowing him, after six months of working together, he’s still something of an enigma. Is it anger and resentment in his eyes? Or undeserved understanding?

“I owe you,” she adds softly. And she does, not just for this, but for everything.

“Damn right you do,” he replies, with a small sideways smile.

Mal takes a breath, and stands. "Help me set up the lines."

Eames pulls out three more IVs, tossing one to each of them. Ariadne expertly slips the needle into her wrist, while Eames helps Fischer do the same.

"We're plugging into Saito," Mal says. "He thinks we're going into the extractor's subconscious, and he'll be working with us as part of a team."

Arthur smiles, impressed. "Helping us break into his own subconscious, and fighting off his own projections. That's devious."

"I try," Mal says, then lowers her voice. "Arthur, are you sure you'll be able to--"

"I will or I won't," he says, matching her tone. He flicks a glance at Eames, to see if the other man overheard, but he's still helping Fischer. "You might want to think of a backup plan, just in case."

Mal grimaces, but before she can reply, Eames comes back, kneeling between her and Arthur. "Are you ready for this?"

"As I'll ever be," Arthur replies. Eames checks the IV in Arthur's wrist with a soft touch, and Arthur adds, "Don't let the projections catch you off guard."

"As if I ever would," Eames scoffs. His hand is still on Arthur's wrist, fingertips resting against his pulse.

"Just be back in time for the kick."

Eames smiles at him. "Go to sleep, darling."

Mal thinks that Eames might quite literally kill her if she comes back from the third level and Arthur doesn't. More than that, she'd be tempted to let him. It'd only be what she deserves.


	16. Chapter 16

Mal inhales. The air is autumn-sharp, damp and cold. She smells leaf litter, pine needles, rot and dirt and decay and--

She exhales, and shifts the rifle in her arms so she can peer through the scope.

"Something's wrong," a voice says softly, from her elbow. Ariadne.

They planned this level to be the forest in winter. There would be better sightlines, any projections would stand out against the stillness and the snow, and the mood was right: a world asleep, under a spell, unchanging.

Mal has woken up to a forest in late fall. Leaves are still clumped onto the trees, falling at random intervals. It’s cold and damp, and the forest is wreathed in mist. The light is gray and dim.

This is Saito's subconscious. It's normal for a dreamer to have some effect on the landscape of the dream, but it should be in the details, the ambiance. Eames' dreams are always slightly garish, almost lurid, while Arthur's are calm on the surface, but with a sharp edge. Eames will dress his dreams in cigar smoke and red velvet, while Arthur will adorn his clean modernist spaces with troubling art.

(Dom's dreams were always deeply calm, in the way that mountains or deep lakes are calm. Mal had loved being in his mind.)

"What is that?" Ariadne whispers. "It's almost like sulfur, but not."

There is something disturbing in Saito's mind, something festering and partially decayed. Mal can feel it, nearly smell it: to her, it's like dried blood and vomit.

"It's the truth we want Saito to discover," Mal says. "I hope."

"He's doing this? Unconsciously?" Ariadne asks. "Because the forest that Yusuf designed wasn’t this...” She trails off, words failing her.

“I know,” Mal says. She shoulders the rifle and stands. "Let's rendezvous with the others."

They follow the narrow dirt trail down the hill until they reach a small clearing. The others appear out of the mists gradually, like ghosts. They’re all dressed in hiking gear: rough denims, thick coats, sturdy boots. Arthur looks pale and drawn, but Mal knows that he has deep reserves he can draw on.

“Arthur,” Mal says. “I want you to take Saito and Robert to the heart of the forest. Ariadne and I will cover you as best we can.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Saito asks.

Mal shakes her head. “You must do this alone,” she says solemnly. “Stay on your guard. Find out the truth.”

“For it will set me free?” Saito asks, offering a small smile.

Mal smiles back. “That is the idea,” she replies, and then reaches out and squeezes his gloved hand. “We’ll cover you as best we can.”

Saito squeezes back, then pulls away. Arthur gives them a nod, then starts to lead the other two down the other path. When they’re out of earshot, Ariadne asks, “Why aren’t you leading him into the center of the maze?”

“Dom,” Mal answers. “If he was in the last level, he’ll probably be after me in this one."

Ariadne nods, then asks. "What about me? Why am I here?"

In truth, it's because Mal didn't want to do this alone, but she can't say that. "You can still catch up with the others, if you'd rather go with them. I'll be fine."

"Yeah, right," Ariadne replies. Mal feels relieved and annoyed at the same time, and they walk in silence for a while.

"Where are the projections?" Ariadne asks.

Mal looks up. They've been climbing on this path for ten minutes at least, but they've been alone the whole time. It's eerily quiet, no sound but the occasional rustle of leaves stirred by the wind.

"Is this normal?" Ariadne asks, her voice hushed.

"No," Mal says. "I've never seen a mind quiet like this. Except--"

"What?" Ariadne asks.

"Except my own, when Dom and I were in Limbo. The streets were empty there, unless we wanted them to be populated."

"Jesus," Ariadne whispers, and Mal assumes that she's replying to her mention of Limbo, until she turns and sees the girl staring at a noose from a tree. It's made of a thin blue nylon rope, and is inexpertly tied.

Mal touches her arm, and Ariadne jumps. "It's not real."

Ariadne exhales slowly. "It is though. Yusuf based this forest off my memories. I saw this noose when I visited. Someone died here." She takes another deep breath.

Mal wants to reassure her, but what could she say? Ariadne's not a child, this is surely not her first confrontation with death, not even in a dream. But it does seem like an omen.

"Come on," Mal says, and pulls her forward.

"Mal--"

"I know," Mal says, and they go, following the path up a slight rise.

"I thought Saito was on our side now," Ariadne says after a few moments.

"Consciously, he is. His subconscious hasn't yet received the message, and is still on the defensive. Especially here, so close to his darkest secret."

Ariadne nods. “It wasn’t like this, you know. The forest, I mean. When I visited, it was solemn. Melancholy. This is just... sinister.”

Mal swallows and thinks that wounds of the heart are just like any wound: if they’re never exposed to air or light, they go gangrenous.

“Wait a second,” Ariadne says, slowing her steps. "Does this place look familiar to you?"

Mal looks around. They've arrived in another clearing that is far too similar to the one that they just left. "Did we get turned around?"

“We must have,” Ariadne answers, doubtful.

Mal looks around and catches sight of something out of place, dangling from one of the trees. She’s frozen by her confusion for a moment, before she realizes what it is and gasps.

“What?” Ariadne asks, then follows Mal’s gaze and flinches. “What the hell is that?”

 _Strange fruit,_ Mal thinks, looking at the animal strung up by its neck on thin blue rope, its neck broken, its eyes dull and lifeless. There are flies crawling over the animal’s eyes.

“Is that a cat?” Ariadne asks.

“Look at the tail,” Mal says. “I think it’s a fox.”

They stand, watching the stiffened corpse for a moment longer.

“Come on,” Mal says. “Let’s go back the way we came. I think there’s a shortcut that loops around the maze.”

They walk in silence for a few moments, and then Ariadne says, "How does someone become militarized?"

"It's like a vaccination," Mal answers. "You expose yourself to a certain threat until your body and mind learn to recognize it as such."

"Expose yourself?" Ariadne asks.

Mal sighs. "You let someone break into your mind and wreak havoc, until you instinctively fight against the intrusion."

Ariadne makes a face. "That sounds painful."

"It is." Mal scrambles over a fallen log, then turns to give Ariadne a hand.

"Is it always a bunch of army guys with guns?"

"Often. It can be other things, as well. It depends on the imagination of the dreamer. Or how the dreamer was militarized."

"So, is Dom...?" Ariadne says softly.

Mal pauses, glaring at her. Ariadne stares back, no judgment on her face for a change, just a sort of curiosity. Mal sighs, then starts walking again. "He’s my one man army."

"Except he's trying to kill you, too."

Mal turns to face Ariadne. "No. He's trying to save me from myself. He always was. Even at the very end."

Ariadne swallows. "What happened?" she asks. "How did Dom die?"

Mal's jaw clenches so hard that her cheeks cramp. She turns away and continues to walk down the path.

"Mal," Ariadne calls. "Mal, wait! Just listen to me--"

"We're not going to talk about this." Mal picks up her pace, letting her long legs carry her away from this increasingly terrible conversation.

Ariadne is so earnest, so sincere in her desire to help, despite everything. Another person who is trying to save Mal from herself. "Listen,” she says. “You need help. You need to talk to someone about this, you should have... Jesus, would you please slow down?"

Mal does, then stops entirely, panting slightly.

"Thank you," Ariadne says, catching up. "I'm sorry, I just think--"

"Does this place look familiar to you?" Mal asks, already knowing the answer.

Ariadne looks around. They've arrived in another clearing that is far too similar to the one that they just left. "Shit,” she whimpers.

"Did Yusuf design a spatial paradox on this level?"

"No," Ariadne replies, turning in place to take everything in. "This wasn’t in the plans he showed _oh fuck_."

Mal whips around. Ariadne is staring at a tree a few dozen yards away. There's a familiar blue nylon noose dangling from one of the branches, but with a grotesque addition: a pale body, dressed in white rags, long black hair covering its face, is now swinging from the thin loop.

Ariadne grabs at Mal, her grip panicked and tight. "Fuck," she says. "What the fuck is that?"

Mal turns to her, grabs Ariadne's face and forces her to look into her eyes. "It's a corpse," she says. "Pull yourself together."

Ariadne swallows, and she speaks in a voice gone high and breathless with fear. “I’m sorry. This is just, I can’t--

A sudden, loud creak interrupts her. Mal looks over Ariadne’s shoulder The hanged corpse is swinging slightly in its noose. But there's no breeze, so why--

It has something in its hand. Something shiny, metal: a knife. A terribly familiar knife, though dirtier and rustier than Mal remembers it.

The hanged corpse twitches. The creaking grows louder.

"What's that sound?" Ariadne whispers.

"Nothing you need to worry about,” Mal says, pulling her around so she’s turned away from the corpse. “Do you know what you're going to do?"

"What?" Ariadne's voice is high, strained. In a few minutes, Mal thinks, her panic is going to get the best of her. Ariadne is a strong, practical girl, but she's not used to dealing with monsters.

Mal, on the other hand, has had plenty of practice.

"You're going to shut your eyes," Mal says. "And hold onto my hand. And then we'll walk away."

"But what about--"

"Shut your eyes," Mal says sharply.

Ariadne does, her eyebrows drawn together. Mal pries the girl's hand off her arm and then slowly turns around. Mal walks off the path, towards the hanging corpse.

"We're not going towards that _thing_ are we?" Ariadne asks, still clutching onto Mal's hand.

"You spent a semester in Japan, didn't you?" Mal asks, keeping her eyes on desiccated body.

"What? Yeah, that's how I knew about this forest."

“Did you hear many ghost stories?”

“No, I-- not really. I was studying Japanese art and film.”

“But you came to this forest. Why would you want to see a place that’s only a destination for people seeking death?”

The body jerks, and its head lolls in the noose. Tangled black hair still obscures most of its face, but part of its mouth is visible. Its lips are pale and drawn back against the sharp, yellow teeth in a grinning rictus.

“I was having-- I heard about the forest, heard how many people went there to die. And I wanted to see if I could...”

Mal leads Ariadne in a wide berth -- out of slashing or kicking range, anyway -- around the corpse. “Could what?”

“I don’t know!” Ariadne whines. “See something, feel something out of the ordinary, have an experience that would make me -- think. Wonder. I didn’t believe in an afterlife, I’d never been able to convince myself that there was something more after we died, but I heard about this haunted forest, and I just wanted to see it for myself.”

Mal looks down. There's a rough dirt path underneath her boots, instead of moss and leaf litter. "Okay," she says. "We're back on the path, I think."

Ariadne opens her eyes and looks around. "Yeah. This looks right."

Mal glances again at the corpse in the tree, but it's fallen still for the moment. "Let's go," she says. "Quickly."

That's when the ground starts shaking underneath them.

* * *

“Shit,” Yusuf says, as a shotgun wielding motorcyclist rumbles onto the road in front of him, straight out of some yakuza film from the 80’s. Yusuf accelerates the van until they’re side by side, then flicks open the van’s door. It smacks into the driver, knocking him off the bike.

“Shit,” Yusuf says again, as two black SUVs swerve onto the road, blocking it. He sends up a quick prayer to any god that might care to listen, and jerks the wheel to the left, crashing through a guardrail and down a muddy decline, trying to get to the road below.

“Shit!” Yusuf shouts, as the van begins to roll. He can feel it, the center of gravity shifting beneath his seat.

Here’s the thing about Somnacin-induced lucid dreaming. The machine is called the PASIV for a reason, and not just because it’s a handy acronym. There’s only a certain amount of control most people can exert over a dream’s landscape, lucid or not. They can control their own actions while remaining aware that they’re dreaming, but the dream becomes less fluid as a whole. Something to do with altered brain waves and the mind’s need for narrative veracity in an induced dream state; Ariadne explained it to him, but they were both drunk, and Yusuf had been distracted, wondering if she might be amenable if he kissed her. (He hadn’t, which he regrets now, considering the likelihood of all of them ending up brain-dead and drooling.)

There are ways around it, ways to trick your mind into remembering that what it’s seeing isn’t real. It’s far easier for some people, like forgers. But Yusuf is an architect in the illicit world of dream heists. It’s rare for him to even spend much time in a dream during the actual job. Sure, he can create paradoxical architecture and illusions, but he’s mostly concerned with creating landscapes and buildings that obey all the rules of the physical world. He can imagine a gun into his hands when it’s called for, but even that much can make him feel nauseated.

So when the van starts to roll, he shuts his eyes and concentrates on not pissing himself in terror, rather than trying to somehow magically prevent the van from spinning out of control.

* * *

Eames is strangling the breath out of one of Saito’s ninja security guards when he feels the floor begin to rumble beneath his feet. But he can’t exactly stop what he’s doing, the man whose windpipe he’s crushing isn’t even unconscious yet, so he just tightens his grip.

“Yusuf, you fucking bastard,” he hisses, when the floor shifts beneath his feet. It’s been doing that all night, minor shifts and tilts, glassware knocking together and chairs scraping across the floor. It’s like being in a house that was built on a trampoline. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you drive.”

The tilt is getting more and more noticeable, so Eames grits his teeth and jerks his arms sharply. The man makes a gurgling noise, but is still clawing at Eames’ arm, even more panicked now. Eames tightens his hold on the man, then jerks again; this time, he hears the man’s neck snap.

Just in time, because the entire hallway suddenly spins on an invisible axis, sending Eames and the newly-dead security guard crashing into the wall.

Hearing crashes from all the rooms around him, Eames spares a moment to be glad that he wasn’t in one of the bedrooms, or, god forbid, that study with its huge desk and wall of books.

Then he remembers that the rest of the team is in the study, and that they’re all unconscious.

“Fuck,” Eames says, scrambling along the wall, even as gravity shifts again underneath him. “Fuck this job, fuck Mal, fuck dream sharing, fuck stupid pissant richboy tourists with daddy issues--”

There’s a creak and the cock of a gun, and Eames instinctively ducks and rolls. A bullet screams through the air next to him, exploding into the wall with a shower of wood splinters. Eames has already pulled out his Beretta and is shooting wildly, willing the bullets to find a target. Judging by the gurgling shout from the other end of the hallway, they do.

“And fuck these secret agent security guards,” Eames adds, holstering his gun and crawling forward again.

* * *

“This world of dew is only a world of dew,” Saito mutters. “And yet, and yet...”

Arthur pauses, one hand on a downed tree. He had quoted the haiku in the previous level to upset and off-balance Saito. He had seen the poem in Yuudai Tanaka’s apartment, the words accompanying a small ink painting of a cherry tree shedding its blossoms onto brown, barren earth. The stamped kanji beneath the poem had read _Hikaru._

Eames would have called it a gamble, but Arthur understands Saito, understands the guilt of outliving someone. He suspects that Saito and Hikaru were lovers, but regardless of whether they were having sex or not, there was some kind of emotional connection there. If he had shared it with his brother, Arthur believed it likely that Saito knew about it as well.

“What is that?” Arthur asks, startling Saito out of his reverie. “That quote?”

“A haiku,” Saito replies, after a wary pause. “A friend of mine was quite fond of it, and its author.”

“What does it mean?” Arthur says, though he already knows. Fischer, standing next to him, is watching them closely. He’s been quiet during this whole trek, which Arthur has been thankful for.

Saito takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “The dew is transitory. It exists for a few hours, then burns off with the dawn. There’s no trace that it ever existed.”

“Like us?” Arthur asks.

Saito nods. “Existing for a short time, leaving little evidence that we were ever in the world. Even the richest and most powerful men--”

Fischer’s eyes, Arthur notes, slide away then, looking off into the forest.

“Their lives,” Saito continues, “are as ephemeral as the dew.”

“And yet?” Arthur prompts.

“And yet, we suspect that this isn’t the whole truth.”

Arthur feels the deep ache in his chest, the phantom bullet that is buried between his ribs. He can taste his own blood in the back of his mouth. Staring his own mortality in the face, he nods. “Or at least, we hope it isn’t.”

Saito opens his mouth to reply when a groaning rumble starts beneath their feet. The trees begin to shake, branches snapping off and dropping to the ground, far too close. Arthur grabs Saito, pulling him out of the way as a heavy branch cracks above them.

“Go!” he shouts. “There’s a shrine at the end of the path, it should be safe. Run!”

He shoves Saito again until he starts to move shakily down the path, reeling as the earth heaves under him.

“Robert!” Arthur calls out. Fischer is standing, frozen in terror. Fucking tourist, Arthur hears in his head, the words and disdain belonging to Eames. Arthur reaches out and snags Fischer’s coat, pulling him forward. “Come on,” he shouts.

“Did you see him?” Fischer asks, grabbing at Arthur as they begin to stumble after Saito. “Did you--”

“Who?” Arthur asks, just before the earth shivers violently beneath them.

* * *

Unthinkingly, Mal pushes Ariadne to the ground and then falls on top of her, covering the other woman’s body with her own. The ground heaves beneath them, the air vibrating with a deep bass rumble, just at the edge of hearing. Mal tenses as she hears the loud snaps and crashes of tree branches falling all around her. Ariadne is struggling, panicky beneath her, and Mal throws an arm over her head, forcing it back down.

“Hold on,” Mal says, unsure if Ariadne will even be able to hear her. Mal can barely hear herself but it must get through, because Ariadne goes still, gripping Mal’s arm.

Eventually, the earthquake stops, though the ground shivers every so often, a fearful tremor. Mal rolls off Ariadne.

“Are you all right?” she asks

“Holy shit,” Ariadne says, sitting up “Do you think Yusuf crashed the van?”

“If he did, there’s nothing we can do,” Mal answers, standing. She activates the communicator in the collar of her jacket. “Arthur? Arthur, report.”

“That’s not very comforting,” Ariadne says.

“I’m not in the business of...” Mal loses her train of thought as she gazes back at the tree they walked past.

The corpse is no longer dangling from its branch. It is now standing in front of the toppled tree, blue nylon rope trailing down its front. Tangled hair hangs in front of its face. A gray hand clutches a rusty kitchen knife.

“Business of what?” Ariadne asks. She’s still sitting on the ground, facing away from the corpse, wincing as she picks gravel out of her hands.

Mal swallows. “Of comforting people. Speaking of which, get ready to run when I tell you.”

* * *

Already off-balance, Robert goes down, pulling Arthur on top of him. Pain lances through him when they land, sharp as a spear. Arthur clutches his ribs, trying to breathe through the knife-like pain. He nearly blacks out, but manages to cling to consciousness.

“Shit,” Robert says. And then, “Ow.”

Arthur coughs, takes one burning breath, then another. He’d felt all right on the hike through the forest, a little out of breath and woozy, but okay. Now, it feels as though all of his nerves have collectively remembered being shot in the chest.  
“Get up,” he tells himself, even though he wants to vomit, the pain is so bad. Pain is in the mind. “ _Get up,_ ” he repeats, gritting his teeth together.

“I’m trying,” Fischer says, and Arthur cracks open an eye. He’d completely forgotten the other man was there. The ground is still shaking, though not so violently as a second ago, and Fischer is indeed trying to struggle to his feet. “Fuck, my head,” he says.

There’s a ribbon of blood wending its way down Fischer’s forehead, and his eye is already swelling. Arthur can’t quite scrape up any sympathy for Robert’s war wound, however, and instead says, “Help me up.”

Fischer grabs onto his hand and pulls Arthur unsteadily to his feet.

* * *

The van rocks to a halt, shifting back and forth on its wheels for a moment.

Yusuf opens his eyes. He waits a moment, then looks down. The steering column is not embedded in his chest. Neither of his legs seem broken. Nor did he piss himself. Not noticeably, anyway. He’s going to count that as a win.

He lets out a breath and takes a look behind him. Arthur’s still a bloody mess, but that’s to be expected, and nobody else seems any worse for taking a spin down a muddy hillside.

Well then. Yusuf restarts the van, and when the fuel tank doesn’t explode, he says, “Eames, you fucking bastard, I am never letting you bribe me into working with you again.”

* * *

It takes Eames a moment before he can even see his teammates underneath the room’s debris. All of the books are off the shelves, the paintings are on the floor, all the furniture is in a heap against one wall. He supposes they’re lucky that nobody went crashing through the glass door to the balcony and flying off into space.

Eames checks everyone. Robert appears to have taken a hit to the face, with a bloody swollen gash opening up his forehead, but nobody else has so much as a rugburn. All the IVs are still in place, by some miracle.

Eames checks Arthur last. Arthur’s face is tense in sleep, drawn and pale. His pulse is still strong and steady, though. Eames runs his hand from Arthur’s throat to his chest, to feel the other man’s heart beating beneath his ribs.

For the second time that night, Eames winces as his fingers touch fabric gone tacky with blood. He pulls his hand away, looking at the red stains on his fingertips.

He looks at the tangled PASIV lines, trying to think of a valid excuse to plug himself into the last dream. There’s none, of course. It would do far more harm than good, leaving everyone unguarded.

Arthur twitches. He would tear Eames a new arsehole if he showed up in the forest, Eames knows.

Eames touches Arthur’s face with his clean, unbloodied hand. He wants to say something, wants Arthur to somehow hear it in the next level and take some kind of strength from it, but he can’t for the life of him think of anything.

* * *

“Are you all right?” Fischer asks him.

Arthur swallows, slowly putting all of his weight on his unsteady feet. “I’ll live. Where’s Saito?”

Fischer hovers over him, keeping an arm out in case Arthur stumbles again. “Probably not too far ahead. He ran when you told him to, right?”

“Go catch up with him. Make sure he gets to that damn shrine. Do you remember how to get there?”

Fischer hesitates, then nods.

“Just keep heading downhill,” Arthur reminds him. “Follow any of the streams, they all converge there. Shoot anything that’s not one of us.”

Fischer nods. He’s obviously nervous about being on his own, but he squares his shoulders and walks away without another word.

Arthur leans against a tree, resisting the urge to crumple back to the ground. He takes a deep breath, ignoring the sharp splinter of pain that comes with filling his lungs. He can do this, he thinks. It’s not like he has a choice.

When this is over, Arthur decides, he is going to let Eames take him somewhere warm and near the ocean. He’ll let Eames ply him with cheap beer and spicy street-food, knead coconut oil into his overworked muscles, keep him in bed for days. All the things Arthur almost never lets him do because it smacks too much of permanence and commitment, and other things that Arthur has avoided throughout his life. Not letting people in is a habit, but it’s one he’s willing to break.

Having made that decision, that promise to himself, Arthur pushes himself off the tree, and takes a step forward, then another. He can do this, he tells himself, and this time he believes it.

A twig snaps behind him. Arthur grabs at his holster, but his reflexes are too slow, dulled by pain and distracted by his reverie, and the gun gets knocked from his hand. He tries to draw breath to shout, but a gloved hand clamps over his mouth.

“Arthur,” Dom whispers in his ear. “Nice to see you again.”

He takes his hand away, and Arthur manages to get two words out -- “Dom, I--” -- before the knife slides between his ribs.


	17. Chapter 17

“I realized something,” Dom tells him.

Arthur’s curled in on himself, hands pressed against the half-dozen stab wounds on his chest, hot blood pulsing through his fingers. He’s never been so aware of death rushing towards him, each beat of his heart bringing it closer. It’s terrifying.

“Mal’s staying for you,” Dom says. He’s crouched above Arthur, bloody knife held loosely in one hand. “Well. For you, for the kids, for this idea she can’t get out of her head. Because she can’t help doubting.”

Dom touches his chin, forcing Arthur to look at him. “It’s why she ran to you after it happened. All she wanted to hear was a definitive yes or no: dream or reality? Was I crazy, or was she?”

Arthur jerks his chin away, but can’t get enough breath to answer.

“That’s all she wanted, some certainty. Someone to convince her one way or the other.”

There is so much blood. His hands are soaked with it. His life is dripping out of him, leaking through his fingers.

Dom sits down next to him. He brushes the hair off Arthur's forehead, and the familiar gesture makes him shudder.

"Do you know what the most virulent contagion is, Arthur?"

Arthur coughs, and manages to answer, "Ebola," in a choked whisper.

Dom smiles. "Smart ass," he says fondly.

Arthur coughs again, and a spray of red hits Dom's sleeve. He brushes at it, unconcerned.

"Mal always thought it was love," Dom says. "I argued that it was an idea. I've changed my mind since then."

Dom pushes Arthur onto his back, then squats over him. Arthur feels the hard blade of the knife against his throat. "It's doubt. Betrayal. Guilt. It pollutes your mind, wrecks everything."

Dom bends over, knees pressing against Arthur’s shoulders, and whispers in his ear, "I betrayed Mal. I broke into her mind and tampered with her thoughts, and that was only the beginning of it. Do you want to hear the rest? What I did to her?"

 _No,_ Arthur mouths. He did, once upon a time; the desire to understand consumed him like a fever. Not anymore. He's already dying, he's going to fall into Limbo and lose his mind, he doesn't need to have his heart broken as well.

Dom tells him anyway.

* * *

It was Eames that taught Mal to appreciate big guns in the dreamscape. She's grateful as she switches the rifle to continuous shooting mode, and brings it up to her shoulder.

The ghoul begins to advance on them, knife held in its fist. Mal exhales and pulls the trigger, aiming low, and cuts its legs out from underneath it.

It's nearly impossible to really kill a monster in a dream, Mal knows. You can only cripple it, run, and regroup.

"Go," Mal commands. Ariadne jumps up and starts running. Mal waits a moment to see if the ghoul will get back up. When it doesn't, she turns and follows, activating the communicator in her collar as she goes.

"Arthur," she says. "Report."

For the second time, she hears only dead air.

She catches up with Ariadne, tugging on her shoulder to get her to slow down. It's no good to go blundering into a possible trap. “It’s not following us,” she says.

"Okay," Ariadne says, slowing down to a walk. "What now?"

"This way," Mal says, taking the lead. They proceed at a slightly slower run to a bluff that Yusuf put into the design. From there, they can see most of the mountainous woods they’ve been wandering in, down to Japanese temple in the center of the valley.

Mal crouches down and slings the rifle onto her shoulder. "See if you can get Arthur on your radio."

Ariadne looks at her oddly, but shrugs and thumbs on her communicator. "Arthur, are you there?"

Again, nothing. Mal looks through the scope on her rifle, but the trees and their falling leaves obscure much of the view. She can see the temple’s outer walls, the tall wooden _torii_ at the east and west entrances to the labyrinth. Beyond them, the paved courtyard, the shallow koi pond, and the temple itself: imposing, forbidding, with moss crawling up the walls, rust on the ornate metal doors. She can’t see any other members of her team, though, not in the courtyard nor on the paths that lead down to it.

"I can’t get through to him. Are the comms working?" Ariadne asks.

Gunshots suddenly echo across the valley.

Mal thumbs her radio back on, switching the channel. "Fischer," she says. "Report in immediately."

There's a burst of static, then the sound of Robert's panicked breathing. "Mal. We--"

"Where's Arthur?" Mal says.

"Shit, I don't know, he was in rough shape when I saw him. We need backup. There are _things_ out here. One of them -- shit!"

More gunfire.

Ariadne is looking at her, pale and scared. Mal swallows, and says, "We're on our way. Hold on."

“Wait,” Fischer says. “Don’t-- don’t leave me.”

Mal must make a face -- she can’t run, shoot down any projections they might come across, fret about Arthur’s silence, and reassure her client at the same time -- because Ariadne activates her mic.

“Is Saito with you?”

“We’re holed up outside the maze, on the south wall. There are...” Fischer hesitates a moment.

“What?” Ariadne asks.

“Projections,” he finally says. “Projections are trying to kill us.”

“Did you see Dom Cobb?” Ariadne asks.

Mal freezes.

“I don’t think so,” Fischer answers.

Mal swallows, then works to unclench her muscles. “We need to move,” she says. “Keep him on the line.”

Ariadne nods, and they start back down the path.

* * *

“You understand why I have to do this?” Dom asks him. He's holding the knife above Arthur's breastbone, poised to fall into his heart.

Arthur doesn’t have the strength to reply. His mouth is thick with the taste of blood.

“It’s for the best. Once she wakes up, she’ll understand that. She’ll forgive me."

Dom passes his hand over Arthur's eyes, forcing them to shut.

"For what it's worth," Dom adds, "I'm sorry it had to happen this way."

 _Eames,_ Arthur thinks. The name is like a thread, pulled taut, keeping him connected to the world.

Then the knife falls. The thread snaps.

* * *

The kindest thing anyone has said about Robert Fischer -- disregarding the flattery that's been said to his face -- was when Uncle Peter called him an "unknown quantity." After years of being an outright disappointment, it was an unexpected pleasure to have at least one person measure him and not find him wanting, but instead, a mystery.

With his back literally against a wall -- the rough stone walls of the temple that Yusuf designed to hold Saito's secrets and, hopefully, the key to some kind of emotional catharsis -- these words are ringing in his ears.

Robert thinks of the first rule of lucid dreaming: retrace your steps. _Do you remember how you got here?_

Robert grits his teeth and aims the gun, firing shot after shot. He tries not to notice that the ghouls coming down the hills have subtly shifted, somehow; their ragged clothing looks more like hospital gowns, their forms taller, more emaciated. More familiar.

Really, how the hell _did_ he get here? Fighting alongside a man he’s paying exorbitant amounts of money to destroy? An unknown quantity, indeed.

His comm squawks. “Fischer?” Ariadne says.

“Still here. Saito too.”

“We’re almost there. Mal says that... Mal says that Saito should go on ahead into the temple.”

Time must be running short. “There’s a problem with that. There are--” _monsters, demons, ghosts_ \-- “Projections. Around us, and in the maze, too.” Thankfully, they hadn’t gone too far in before they’d realized _that._

“There’s a shortcut. Saito, can you hear me?”

Robert glances over at Saito, raising his eyebrows. The other man has paused in his shooting, and is listening intently. “Yes, I’m here,” he says.

“There’s a sewer grate by the eastern gate. If you pry it up, and take the left-hand tunnel, it’ll lead you to an underground passage that goes beneath the courtyard maze. It should bring you up right to the main entrance of the temple.”

“Eastern grate, sewer, left tunnel. Thank you,” he says, then thumps Robert’s arm. “Come on.”

“You go alone,” Robert shouts to Saito. “I’ll cover you.”

The other man pauses while holstering his gun and glances over at him. “Are you sure?” he says.

Robert sights, aims, and squeezes off another shot. He’s not sure of anything. Uncertainty is an old, familiar feeling; it defined his life while his father was still alive. After the funeral, it had been curiously absent. Robert supposes he’d been too consumed with the slow destruction of his father’s empire to second-guess himself.

“Just go!” Robert shouts.

Saito stands, squeezes Robert’s shoulder in what, he assumes, is supposed to be some kind of gesture of solidarity or whatever, then darts around the corner.

 _Unknown quantity,_ he thinks again. But at least he remembers how he got here. Even though the past few months feel more like a dream than this does, right now, he remembers every step of his circuitous path.

* * *

They find Arthur on the path, the ground surrounding him dark and heavy with blood. His skin is already cold when Mal touches his cheek. The chill seeps into her fingers, worms its way into her chest.

“What do we do?” Ariadne asks.

Mal speaks through numb lips. “Keep going.”

The look of hatred in Ariadne’s expression is absolute, unforgiving, and she leaves without a backwards glance.

Mal brushes her lips against Arthur’s cold cheek, grabs his backpack, and does the same.

* * *

They find Fischer, who’s shooting desperately at the growing mob of ghouls coming down the hill. These are similar to the one that Ariadne and Mal encountered, but are still, somehow, distinct.

They look like Robert’s father, Mal realizes.

“We need to get out of here,” Mal says. She practically empties her magazine cutting down the ghouls, then shoves Fischer in the direction of the eastern gate.

“Wait, why aren’t we going through the maze?” Ariadne asks. “Won’t Saito’s projections follow us in there?”

“Those aren’t just his projections out there,” Mal answers, pushing her forward.

“What?” Ariadne says.

“Think of the blue noose, Ariadne. I doubt Yusuf actually planted that there.”

“You mean--”

“Dom warned me,” Mal spits, feeling like an idiot. “That there was something I’d forgotten. It was the conversation we had,” she says, motioning to Fischer.

“What conversation?” Fischer asks, obviously not remembering.

“This Somnacin blend. It makes it easy for someone to bring in projections of their own subconscious. Not just Dom, but the train on the first level, these ghosts out here--”

“They’re mine, you mean?” Ariadne asks.

“Both of yours, I think,” Mal says. “Unless you happened to know Maurice Fischer at the end of his life as well.”

They’ve reached the sewer grate. Saito’s left it slightly ajar, and Mal pulls it up easily. Ariadne goes down first, then Mal pushes Fischer towards it.

“I still don’t understand why we’re taking the shortcut instead of the maze,” Ariadne says.

“Because if you two know about the shortcut, so do your projections,” Mal says, opening up Arthur’s backpack. “I can’t believe how stupid we’ve been.”

“What do we do, then?” Fischer says.

Mal digs around in Arthur’s backpack, smiling grimly when her hand closes around a cardboard box. Ever the Boy Scout, her Arthur, always prepared. Except in the end, of course, and the memory of Arthur’s still body makes her stomach cramp in sudden, wild grief.

“That’s easy,” Mal says, pulling out the plastic explosive. “We destroy the shortcut.”

Ariadne and Fischer watch as she sets the explosive around the arched doorway that leads to the tunnel. They look like children, like Hansel and Gretel, warily watching the witch stoke the fires of her oven.

“Go,” Mal says. The image -- of herself as the witch, leading unsuspecting innocents to their doom -- is both melodramatic and distressingly apt. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She doesn’t turn around to watch them go, just listens to the sound of their retreating footsteps.

It was Eames who taught her about explosives, taught all of them. Dom hadn’t been a particularly apt pupil, though he understood the need for the lessons; it was all about narrative veracity, he claimed. The mind had an instinctive understanding of reality. If you were trying to convince someone that something was real, that kind of lucidity mattered. The artistry of dreaming came in knowing when and how to push the rules without breaking them completely.

She afixes the explosives to the rough-hewn stone of the doorway, thinking of the days spent in the stuffy walk-up apartment in Queens, doing what Dom had called “skill-sharing” without even a hint of irony.

God, that had been so long ago. Before she’d been a mother, back when she and Dom had been thieves masquerading as academics, rather than the other way around. They’d only known Arthur for a year or so, just long enough for him to finally trust them, to relax around them, get drunk and unwind and let them see him rumpled and dozing on the couch. It was a year of drinking cheap wine one night and expensive champagne the next, caviar or plain cous-cous for a week straight, feasts and famines month-to-month. She and Dom had been consumed by their passion; Arthur and Eames had been toeing around each other like dancers, or boxers, daring one another to make a move. They’d all been young and stupid and daring and greedy, children hungry for life. Rising stars, they’d thought, burning a new path through the sky.

Mal doesn’t realize that she’s crying until her sight blurs, and the view of her hands, with their torn nails and callused fingertips, wavers. She wipes her eyes and nose on her jacket and wonders what she’s going to tell Eames. If he’ll even allow her to get the words out. If it would be better to stand in this doorway, detonate the bombs, and slip out of the world that way.

“Mal?”

Her name comes echoing down the dripping hallway. She can make out Ariadne’s silhouette against the light at the other end. Mal wipes at her eyes again and arms the last explosive in the doorway.

“I’m coming,” she says. “Where’s Fischer?”

“I sent him on ahead. I wanted to make sure that --” Ariadne bites the rest of her sentence off.

“That I didn’t do anything stupid?” Mal asks. “Rather late for that.”

Ariadne looks at her warily. Mal realizes that her eyes are still wet, and wipes at them again. “Come on, we should--”

The sound of a gunshot echoes down the chamber. Mal nearly drops the detonator, fumbling at it for a moment before catching it. Ariadne is already sprinting down the hallway, and Mal stuffs it into the backpack before following her. They get to the stairs that lead back above ground, stumbling up them. Mal nearly collides with Robert, who’s standing stock-still at the top, a gun clenched in his right hand. He’s staring ahead at...

Dom. Who’s on the ground, next to the wide stone pond Yusuf had placed in front of the stairs. He’s bleeding onto the wet paving stones, thin ribbons of blood mixing with the rain that’s beginning to fall. Their eyes meet.

Mal feels like the ground is sliding out from underneath her feet.

She doesn’t even see Saito until Ariadne shoves her out of the way, running over to the pond and splashing into it. She hauls Saito out of the water, dragging him back onto the paving stones. Saito doesn’t move at all, to help or hinder her.

“He was holding him under,” Robert says. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

He sounds apologetic. Mal feels hysteria bubbling up in her chest, a rising giddiness. Robert’s sorry that he killed her husband, as he drowned an innocent man.

“He’s not breathing!” Ariadne calls. Mal and Robert watch as she tilts Saito’s head back, seals her mouth over his, forces breath into his lungs.

“Stop,” Mal says, her voice a croak. “Don’t, it’s over. We failed. We can’t help him.”

Ariadne looks up at her; she looks like a half-drowned kitten, hair wet and face ragged with emotion. “That’s it?” she asks. “That’s it?”

“He’s already in Limbo,” Mal says. “Even if you could revive him--”

“I can--” Ariadne starts to protest.

“Even then, his mind would still be trapped down there.” Like Arthur, she thinks. Like Dom.

“Like you were,” Ariadne says.

Mal blinks, wondering if she’s just spoken her thoughts aloud. “What of it?”

“But you came back,” Ariadne says.

Mal stares at her. “What are you saying?”

“We follow him down. Find him, kick him awake. Fischer, when you hear the musical cue, use a defibrillator to revive him. Yusuf put one in a cupboard on the veranda, just there.” She waves at a tall chest, set outside the doors to the temple.

Mal swallows. “He’ll have to use a kick on us, otherwise we’ll be stuck down there as well.”

“The pond,” Ariadne replies. “We’ll get two chairs, set them up, he can tip us on the musical cue. Even if the fall doesn’t wake us, the water definitely will.”

Mal still hesitates. It can’t be that easy. And of course, it won’t be. “Dom will be down there,” she says. “He’ll have Saito.”

Ariadne is looking at her steadily. “Can I trust you to do what needs to be done?”

Mal looks at Dom’s still body, then at Saito’s, his blue-tinged lips. “I can find him,” Mal says. “He wants me to. He wants me back down there with him.”

“And then?” Ariadne asks. “When we find him?”

Mal can’t find it in her to answer, so she looks at Robert. “Do you know how to use this?” she asks, handing over her rifle.

“Well enough,” Robert answers.

“Good,” Mal says, tossing it over. She runs up the stairs to the temple and pulls a straight-backed bench away from the wall, hauling it down the stairs and setting it down in front of the pond. Ariadne is already pulling a PASIV out of her backpack, unspooling the lines, inserting the needle into her vein.

“Ready?” she asks, as Mal slips the needle underneath her skin.

Mal glances at Dom, bleeding onto the paving stones. His eyes have closed.

“Yes,” she says, and shuts her eyes as well.


	18. Chapter 18

Saltwater stings Mal’s eyes, and she coughs as it goes up her nose. There’s sand under her palms, shifting grains under her fingers. The sun burns the skin of her shoulders, the back of her neck.

She takes a breath, dragging air into her lungs. This is all so familiar.

“Mal!” someone calls. It takes a second to place the voice: Ariadne. Mal looks at the watch on her wrist, the second hand frozen between 3:34 and 3:35. There’s the weight of a metal top in pocket; the wrong weight, too heavy.

This is a dream. This is her dream.

Mal pushes herself out of the water. Ariadne gets an arm around her shoulders and helps her up.

“Is this it?” Ariadne asks. “Are we here?”

 _Are we here,_ Mal repeats to herself. What an odd phrase, and yet, it’s fitting. She takes a look around and realizes, yes, this is their world, the one she and Dom created and eventually discarded. The self-contained utopia that they outgrew.

That Dom outgrew, anyway. He was the one that sought to return to the wider world above, while Mal would have been content to stay here. Even now, in its decayed state -- streets and buildings abandoned, vacant of life, decrepit -- it seems to drawn her in, welcome her home.

At least Mal can recognize the danger in that now. “Yes,” she answers. “This is the world we built. Come on.”

Ariadne follows her wordlessly out of the surf and onto the avenue that leads to the beach, staring all around her. It feels a bit invasive to have her here, which is ridiculous, but this was a private, sacred place. Mal’s memories of it are, for the most part, untainted; even Dom’s betrayal seemed small, compared to what happened later. This was their private garden before the fall, now lying fallow and gone to seed.

“This is incredible,” Ariadne says. “You built all this?”

“We both did. We had all the time in the world, after all.”

“Fifty years,” Ariadne says softly.

Mal nods. “When we grew tired of building, we started on our memories. Come on,” she says, grabbing Ariadne’s hand. She pulls her along through a maze of empty streets until they find it: their neighborhood, as Dom liked to refer to it, a wide plaza of flat gray cobbles, with a fountain Dom based off of the Medici Fountain in Paris.

Mal points. “That was our first apartment together, in Boston, then our walk-up in New York. We moved to that house when I was pregnant with Phillipa. And there...”

Mal’s hand falls as she sees the house -- the _copy_ of the house -- in which she grew up, in the village just south of Bordeaux. It is dilapidated, its windows broken, hinges torn off, roof partially caved in. The front door is ajar, hanging at an angle. Ruined.

“What’s that?” Ariadne asks softly, surveying the damage.

“My childhood home,” Mal answers. She wonders if the dollhouse in the attic is intact, and what secrets the safe inside it holds. Or has it too fallen apart after its violation, spilling out her private thoughts?

Is this house the mirror to her mind? Is she ruined as well?

“Is Dom in there?” Ariadne asks, jarring Mal from her thoughts.

Mal inhales sharply. “No,” she decides. “He’ll be at home.”

Ariadne nods. “Take us there.”

Mal finds she can’t move, her muscles locked with fear. Ariadne takes her hand, squeezes it, and tugs her forward. Mal stumbles forward a few steps until her legs remember how to walk. It’s hard, like moving in water, like trying to run in a natural dream. Something in her resists every step.

“How are we going to wake Saito up?” Ariadne asks, when they’re standing outside the building that they made their home.

Mal swallows. “He’ll need a kick. We’ll improvise.”

“What did you do last time?”

“Dom knew,” Mal says, and finds herself choking on the words. She swallows, tries again: “Dom knew. That to wake up, we had to die. On purpose. After he--” And again, she can’t go on. Her jaw clenches so hard that her cheeks cramp.

“After he incepted you,” Ariadne prompts.

Mal nods. “That’s what it took to make me remember. To save me, he had to get me to wake up.”

“What did you do?”

Mal can’t say the words, so again, she points. From the vantage point of the square, one can just barely see the railroad tracks. “The train,” she says. “We waited on the tracks for it to come.”

 _You’re waiting for a train,_ Dom says in her mind. _A train that will take you far, far away._

When she chances a glance at Ariadne, the girl’s mouth is pressed into a thin line. Is she angry? Why?

Ariadne pushes open the glass doors to the building, and walks straight to the lobby. Mal follows her, wondering if the elevator will even work. But of course it does, the button glowing beneath the grime once she pushes it.

“What happened when you woke up?” Ariadne asks, when the doors open. She pushes the single button on the wall. “What was it like?”

Mal swallows. “Difficult,” she says, but the word doesn’t suffice. “Impossible,” she corrects, and then the words pour out of her. “I had forgotten -- chosen to forget -- about reality, my children. And sometimes, I’d be doing something -- cutting tomatoes for sandwiches, trying to cook dinner, and it would hit me. The belief that none of it was real. That it was nothing but an elaborate prison of my own making, that I had to escape.”

With a creak, the elevator begins its slow ascent. “And Dom?”

“I was so focused on myself, I didn’t even notice. He wasn’t struggling with it like I was. He was making a plan.”

“A plan for what?”

The bell dings. They’ve arrived.

“For us to wake up,” she answers.

The doors open. Mal steps out, and Ariadne follows her down the hall.

“There’s something you should know about inception,” Mal says. “About why it’s so hard to do. You see, the mind knows how to trace the genesis of an idea. You can plant something in someone’s mind, but not without leaving your own fingerprints.”

“What do you mean, fingerprints?” Ariadne whispers. Mal pushes open the door to their home, the one in Palo Alto. She’s inundated with memories at her first breath: she can smell the sea, the lilies that Dom brought home for their anniversary, the fresh-baked scones that Dom’s mother had brought over.

“Doubt,” Mal says. “It creeps up on your convictions, erodes their foundations. The only way to truly incept someone--”

“--Is to get your mark to give themselves the idea,” Dom says, stepping out of the doorway. “You always were smarter than me, Mal.”

Mal steps in front of Ariadne, spotting the knife in Dom’s hand. “Hello, my love.”

“Mal. This is your protege, then? Your sidekick?” Dom says, gesturing. “Ariadne, the girl who found her way through the labyrinth? That’s a pretty heavy-handed metaphor, don’t you think?”

Mal doesn’t say anything, just forces herself to meet Dom’s eyes steadily; if she pretends she’s not afraid, maybe it will eventually become true.

“So tell me, oh muse of the maze: what are the defining characteristics of a dream?”

Ariadne remains silent. Mal feels the girl shudder in fear.

“Come on, you must know this,” he says, cajoling. “How do you distinguish a dream from reality? Mutable laws of physics? Tell that to a quantum physicist. Reappearance of the dead?” he asks, gesturing to himself. He points at Ariadne. “Spiritual guides? Symbols and metaphors are just a means to an end in a dream.”

“Stop,” Mal says, her voice hoarse.

“What about persecution of the dreamer, the creator? How has it been, evading Cobol, getting chased by anonymous men bent on your destruction? Any of this sounding familiar?”

“Dom--”

“Doubt, Mal. That’s the most resilient parasite.”  He takes a step closer. “But you don’t doubt me. We trust each other.”

Mal feels herself drifting to him, shaking off Ariadne’s grasping hand. Dom is as implacable as gravity.

“Once you start dreaming, you stop believing in one reality. You chose this one once, Mal. You could again.”

“She’s already made her choice,” Ariadne says, from behind them. “Mal, remember your kids.”

“The kids are here,” Dom says. “They’re just sleeping.”

Mal’s mouth goes dry, and she stops moving forward. Ariadne must notice, must put it together, because she grabs her arm.

“Why are your children always asleep in your dreams?” she asks. “It’s not just because of how you left them, is it? He said something to me, once--”

Mal remembers: Dom’s voice, in their darkened bedroom: _I gave them something to make them sleep._

She meets Dom’s eyes. “He drugged them,” she whispers. “That night.”

Dom sighs, and a look of sadness crosses his features. “Oh, sweetheart.” He touches her face, his palm warm, _alive,_ against her cheek. “You miss them, don’t you?”

“He drugged them,” Ariadne says again, her voice an insistent hiss at Mal’s back. “What happened then?”

“I wanted to make it easier for her,” Dom says. “I incepted her, but I botched it. I left those fingerprints, that lingering doubt. She didn’t know what was real, what was a dream. All she knew was--”

“Guilt,” Mal says. “At forgetting my children, at choosing a life without them. I owed it to them to stay wherever they were.”

“Even if they _weren’t real_ ,” Dom adds. “So I thought, if they weren’t there...”

“Then I’d agree to wake up,” Mal finishes. She shivers, feeling nauseous.

“What do you mean, if they weren’t there?” Ariadne says.

“I wanted to make it easy for you,” Dom says, directing his words at Mal. “They were only projections, but you were confused. You loved them too much, felt too much guilt, and I thought, this will hurt now, doing it like this, but it’ll free you from having to choose. If I took the kids out of the picture--”

“If you killed them, you mean?” Ariadne asks.

“They were just projections!” Dom shouts. “I’m their father, you think I wouldn’t know the difference? Besides, it was going to be quick, a clean shot while they were asleep.”

Mal shudders again, remembering the darkened room, the billowing curtain, the stark moonlight outside. Dom pleading with her, that this was the only way to get back to their real children. Phillipa and James unmoving in their beds, barely breathing. Dom’s cold hand on her face, as he told her about the emails he’d sent, to Arthur, his mother, their lawyer; saying that Mal hadn’t seemed well, that she’d been acting strange, that she sometimes believed she was dreaming. All of it true, of course, while Dom had appeared steady as a rock, unyielding and sure.

Had he drugged her as well? Is that why it took her so long to act, and when she finally could move, it was like trying to run in water? She’d thought, right then, that Dom must be right, because it felt like nothing so much as a nightmare.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Mal says through numb lips. She feels empty and hollow when she says, “I don’t remember.”

The gun went off once, she knows. The police dug the bullet out of the wall of the kids’ room, and both her and Dom’s fingerprints were on the gun. But the next thing Mal remembers is sitting at the kitchen table, bruises on her face and arms, her hands and chest splattered with Dom’s blood, and Dom’s body was in the hallway, his blood soaking into the hardwood floors. The knife was on the table in front of her. Only her fingerprints were on the handle.

When the kids woke up the next day, their father was dead and their mother was in police custody. Eames posted her bail; Arthur had called him, but refused to come himself, and she’d known then that he would never believe she was innocent. Why would he? She wasn’t.

“Dom,” she says, the sound of his name round and familiar to her lips. Her husband: the man who had only ever loved her too much.

There are tears in his eyes when he says, “I only wanted to save you, Mal. I still do.”

* * *

Damn it, Yusuf should have stuck with his original life plan of being a starving artist. He is now bleeding from half a dozen cuts on his face, thanks to the windshield being shot in. With the rainwater blasting his face as he drives to the pier, they all sting like fuckery.

He’s already cursed out every single person in the van. Mal got two rants aimed at her, actually, and Eames three or four. (He only cursed Ariadne out briefly, for distracting him from realizing what a shitshow this job was with her brilliance and her willingness to argue about post-structuralist philosophy.) He moved on to making unlikely promises to various deities in exchange for their divine intervention in keeping him safe -- none of which he’ll keep, in all likelihood, so he’s progressed now to voicing his regrets about his life choices.

“I could be living in a shitty flat in Camden, eating spaghetti and bacteria-infested kebabs five days a week,” he tells his unconscious team members. “I could be having a horribly unsatisfying string of one-night stands with alcoholic poets. I hear poverty is a very ennobling experience.”

He doubts that, but poverty is preferable to getting shot by some energy mogul’s subconscious projections and landing in Limbo.

Thankfully, this is when he finally spots the pier.

He grabs the mp3 player out of the glovebox, slips the headphones on over Eames’ ears, and presses play. “Hope you’re ready, mate.”

Then he turns back to the road, shoving the van into gear. “Geronimo,” he mutters, and guns it.

* * *

Eames is planting explosives on the balcony when he hears Edith Piaf begin to moan about the blue sky collapsing in on itself. As if in sympathy with the sentiment, thunder rumbles out of the clouds overhead.

“Fuck off,” Eames moans. “Already?

He and Yusuf practiced this, until they both knew it like the steps of a dance: thirty seconds of music roughly translated to twelve minutes on his level. Six minutes in, the van will launch itself off the pier, which will be followed by about two minutes of near weightlessness, in which the van is suspended between its upward force and the pull of gravity. Then there’s about four minutes for Eames to actually make sure everyone is set for the kick, put the headphones on Fischer, and then set off the explosives.

The weightlessness will be a bit tricky. As will the various bloodthirsty projections in Saito’s castle. Eames hurries through planting the rest of the explosives, then jogs back up to the study.

Where he finds two of said bloodthirsty projections standing outside the door. Bollocks. He manages to drop one with his Beretta, but the second has quicker reflexes, pulling a gun out from a shoulder holster and returning fire. Eames ducks back down the hallway, counting down the seconds. The projection chases him down the stairs, and Eames can already feel the stomach-swooping sensation of lightness in his limbs. Shit.

At least he’s expecting it, which is more than he can say for the projection. The guard shouts when a step sends him tumbling forward. The moment is all Eames needs. He grabs one of the wooden support beams next to the stairs, using centrifugal force to swing out and back, landing a kick in the man’s torso that sends him tumbling over the banister. The room’s gravity is nearly canceled out, and the guard flails helplessly as he hangs in space, not quite falling. Eames wraps his legs around the beam, steadying himself long enough to make a shot. He hits the man in the chest, the blood spraying out into space and then hanging there, like a curtain of mist, behind him. The recoil force of the gunshot nearly dislodges Eames from his perch, twenty or so feet above the polished wooden floors of the main room, but he hangs on, then pulls himself back onto the stairway.

One for the books, he thinks. Arthur will never believe him.

* * *

There’s nothing like dreaming to make one aware of one’s own neuroses. If he gets out of this alive, Robert’s going back into therapy. It’s obvious he needs it.

 _“Robert.”_

Robert tightens his grip on the rifle as something calls his name again, looking for something to shoot. The voice sounds as if it’s coming from nearby, but there are only three people in the courtyard with him: two are dreaming, and the other is dead.

That’s when he remembers the tunnel. Mal never detonated the explosives.  

“Shit,” he says. He stands up and grabs the backpack by Mal’s feet, dumping the contents on the ground. He grabs what he assumes is the detonator for the explosives she planted: a thin black box with wires, a blunt antenna, and a red button. He moves to press it, then hesitates. Would an explosion count as a kick? Would it blow him out of the dream, and leave the others in Limbo?

He almost presses it anyway. Then he puts it in his jacket pocket, hoists the rifle back up to his shoulder, and goes to investigate the mouth of the tunnel.

The smell coming out of there-- rotting flesh, soiled sheets, hospital disinfectant, all the too-familiar elements of death-- nearly makes him retch. Then that voice:

 _“Robert.”_ Hoarse, wet, fluid in the lungs, confused and angry.

“Dad?” Robert whispers.

A tall, gaunt figure, dressed in a ragged and torn gown, shuffles partially into the light.

“Son,” Maurice Fischer answers.

Robert swallows down the urge to vomit. “What are you doing here?”

“I could--” A grating cough interrupts him. “I could ask you the same.”

“You... you’re not real.”

“Don’t waste our time by--” Another hacking cough, the figure shaking with the force of it. “By declaring the obvious. This is a dream. You brought me here. Why?”  

Robert takes a shallow breath, trying not to notice the sickly-sweet smell of rot in his nostrils. “Your will left me the majority of shares in the company. After years of telling me I was barely fit to run my own life, you left me an empire. Why would you do that?”

The figure in the dim half-light sways on its feet. “What do you want to hear?” it growls. “I don’t have any more answers than you do.”

“No,” Robert says. He actually takes a step down the stairs. “No, that’s not good enough. I’ve been a disappointment to you for thirty years, why would you do that to me? Why leave me everything?”

Silence, except for irregular, rasping breaths.

Robert takes another step down. “Tell me, damn it.”

After a moment, the figure takes another step forward. Robert can see the stains on the gown, the faded stripes.

“Listen,” his father says.

Robert does, but when Maurice says nothing, he starts to ask, “Dad, what--”

 _“Listen.”_

Robert swallows his words, and after a moment, hears the music.

“Shit,” he says, turning back up the stairs. He has to revive Saito, or otherwise this whole fucked-up venture will have been for nothing. At the mouth of the tunnel, he hesitates, looking back over his shoulder, but there’s nothing there to see.

Robert runs to the veranda, yanking the defibrilator case out of the teak cabinet, ignoring the tears burning his eyes.

* * *

“We need to find Saito, Mal,” Ariadne hisses.

Dom withdraws his hand, moving into the kitchen, bracing himself against the kitchen table. The curtains behind him suddenly billow in a freshening wind.

“Dom, where is he?” Mal asks.

“Nowhere,” he says, looking out the window. Clouds are beginning to gather in the sky, black and menacing. “Nowhere at all.”

There’s a familiar click, and then Ariadne is pointing a gun past Mal’s shoulder. “Tell us where he is!” she shouts.

“You can’t have him,” he says over his shoulder. His tone is bored, lifeless.

“If I stay,” Mal says slowly, “Will you let Ariadne take him back?”

Dom turns back to her, studying Mal closely.

“What? Mal, _no,_ ” Ariadne whispers.

Lightning arcs across the sky, and the wind picks up; a low moan, a familiar but distorted sigh of music.

“Where is Saito, Dom?” Mal asks again.

“Mal--!”

“He’s on the balcony,” Dom says, jerking his head. “Little confused, but he’s fine.”

Mal walks forward, pulling Ariadne with her, until she’s standing in front of Dom. “Go,” she says, pushing the girl towards the balcony doors. She doesn’t dare look away from Dom while she does.

“He’s here!” Ariadne calls.

“How is he?”

“Alive and conscious,” she answers. “But Mal, it’s time, we have to--”

A clap of thunder interrupts her, shaking through the house.

“Your kids are waiting,” Ariadne says, when the air finally falls silent.

“No, the kids are here,” Dom insists. “I can wake them up, if you want.”

“Don’t,” Mal says.

“We can all be together again,” he whispers.

“No, we can’t,” Mal says. She’s amazed that she can speak, with the way her heart is breaking in her chest. But this pain feels sharp and clean: like draining a wound of its infection.  “We can’t, because of what you did,” she says. “I’m not staying for you.”

She looks at Ariadne, who’s already soaked with rain. “Arthur’s down here. He’ll be lost unless I bring him back.”

Ariadne stares at her, mouth open in shock. Suddenly, her eyes dart to the left of Mal’s shoulder, her lips forming words, her name, a warning.

Mal throws her weight to her right, pulling the gun out of her waistband at the same time. She feels the impact of the knife in her shoulder, knocking the wind from her lungs, but no pain. Not yet, anyway.

She jams the gun into Dom’s sternum and pulls the trigger. The power of the shot knocks him back against the table. For a moment, he stares at her uncomprehendingly, then falls gracelessly to the floor.

Not real, she reminds herself. She’s already killed Dom. That doesn’t stop her from dropping the gun, falling to her knees, and vomiting on the blood-splattered floor, her stomach heaving and wrenching painfully. It feels like everything is coming up out of her: the last year’s worth of pain and guilt and _absolute rage_ at what Dom had done to her, violating her mind and then blasting their family apart; all of it brutally forcing its way up her esophagus until she’s utterly empty. When she finally looks up, it’s already over: Dom has died, again, blood trickling from his nose and mouth, eyes empty and staring.

 _Not real,_ Mal thinks. The only thing’s she’s killed is a ghost. In that moment, she desperately hopes it’s enough to keep him down.

“Mal--” Ariadne says, stepping into the kitchen. Rainwater drips from her hair, diffusing the blood on the floor, like water and ink.

 _“Don’t,”_ she spits. Whatever the girl might have to say, Mal can’t stand to hear it.  “Get out of here. Finish the fucking job.”

Ariadne nods. “I’ll tell Eames. That you’re bringing Arthur back.”

Mal sucks in a breath, laughs jaggedly. Ariadne’s faith in her is incomprehensible, but Mal appreciates the confidence, unfounded as it is.

Mal watches Ariadne steps back out onto the balcony. She mutters a few words to Saito, and then she rudely pushes him over the railing. Mal can barely hear him scream over the tearing wind and rain. With one last look over her shoulder, Ariadne follows him.

* * *

Ariadne thrashes underwater, caught between the two layers of the dream: the churning sea in Limbo, the still pool of the Japanese temple. She feels an arm around her shoulders and grabs at it, using it to haul herself back up into the light and air.

Gasping, she manages to choke out: “Leave Mal.”

Robert pulls Ariadne out of the pool, laying her on her side on the cold cobbles. “What do you mean, leave her?”

Ariadne coughs, spitting up water onto the stones. “She’s not coming back. Is Saito-- ?” she manages, before coughing again.

Fischer points. Ariadne wipes the water from her stinging eyes, and sees Saito, walking unsteadily to the doors of the temple. Ariadne spits again, trying to get the foul taste of the murky water out of her mouth, then pushes herself off the ground.

“Come on,” she says hoarsely. “I need to see this.”

Fischer helps her up, and they follow Saito quietly. He’s hesitating before the ornate wooden door, tracing the carvings with his fingers. She briefly considers pushing them open for him, but he finally does it himself. The doors swing inward with a measured slowness, groaning on their iron hinges. Behind them--

An impossible field of poppies, riotous color. After the muted gray world of the forest, it’s stunning. A young man is kneeling in the flowers, facing away from them. His skin is pale, but there’s color in his cheeks. He’s wearing a simple outfit of wide, off-white pants and a white shirt. Hikaru, Ariadne remembers. That was his name.

Saito walks in through the doors, leaving them open. Without a thought, Ariadne follows, leaning against the door. Robert follows behind her, hesitant.

Saito strips out of his jacket, scarf, and gloves, dropping the heavy clothing on the ground, and goes to kneel in front of the young man. The man bows his head, acknowledging Saito's presence.

“Youshiro,” he says. His voice is light, almost musical. Then, perhaps unsurprisingly, he begins to speak in Japanese.

 _“Fuck,”_ Fischer hisses. Ariadne elbows him, and he glares at her. “How the hell am I supposed to know if--”

“Shh,” she hushes him, concentrating on what the two men are saying. “Saito’s asking for forgiveness.”

“You speak Japanese?”

Ariadne shrugs. “Studied it in college.”

“What are they--?”

 _“Shut up,”_ she says, turning back to the men, her brow furrowed. Saito was looking at the ground, his shoulders shaking with emotion. “Something about cowardice. Being afraid.”

Hikaru nods, and speaks quietly.

“They both agreed to die, I think?” she says, unsure.

“A suicide pact? Shit,” Fischer said, sounding somewhat impressed. “But Saito lived.”

Saito nods, lips pressed into a tight, unhappy line, then speaks in a harsh, low voice.

“I left you,” Ariadne translates. “I lied to your family, the police. I -- shit, I don’t know that word.”

Saito turns his face away, but the young man touches him, puts his hand on Saito’s cheek and forces him to meet his eyes.

Ariadne’s translation is coming easier now, less stilted. “You left me. You will leave me again. That is what the... the living do. The dead can only wait.”

“Hikaru,” Saito says again, voice shaking with emotion.

“Youshiro,” Hikaru says again, the name soft in the air. His voice is kind, fond.

Ariadne is nearly tripping over the words, trying to get them out. “You have suffered for twenty years. What good was it? You lived with...” She pauses, brows furrowing. “With half of your heart beating.”

Saito swallows, closing his eyes. The man strokes his thumb across Saito’s cheek, then drops it to his chest, over his heart, then says a few soft words.

Fischer nudges her.  “What did he say?”

Ariadne takes a deep breath, and sighs. “That he forgives him.”

The man gives Saito a gentle push on the chest, forcing him to sit up straight. Saito blinks, staring as Hikaru fishes a wrinkled, folded piece of paper and an ink pen out of Saito’s breast pocket. Hikaru puts it on the ground between them, and writes something: Ariadne can’t read the kanji from her position, but she can make out a bright red flower on the paper: a poppy.

Hikaru refolds it, and places it carefully back in Saito’s pocket. Saito covers Hikaru’s hand with his own, the expression on his face fierce.

“Is that it?” Fischer whispers.

“The smallest, simplest idea,” Ariadne says. Like forgiveness: something that can grow.

There’s a sudden jerk, the unpleasant vertigo of falling, and Ariadne feels herself pulled away from the dream.

* * *

Mal’s not sure how long she lies on the floor, shivering. The thunder is deafening now, and the rain is coming in through the open balcony doors, splattering onto her face and hands, making the blood on the floor run in thin rivulets. Eventually, Mal forces herself off the ground. She crawls across the floor to Dom’s body, presses her cheek against his, and closes his staring eyes with her fingers.

She feels as though she should speak, but really, there’s nothing left to be said. She can’t offer him forgiveness, not yet, nor ask for it.

She kisses the corner of his mouth instead, like she used to do in their long-ago shared mornings, in an effort to ease him into waking, to bridge the gap between sleep and consciousness gently. His lips are already cold, slick with rain.

 _Goodbye,_ she thinks, but doesn’t say. She stands on shaking legs and makes her way to the balcony, looking out numbly.

The city she and Dom built has been inundated. Water crashes against glass and stone, tears down the fountains and houses and trees. She can feel it, eroding away the foundations of the building, the minute tremors and vibrations.

All it takes is a mental nudge to bring it all tumbling down.

 

* * *

 _In my old home  
which I forsook, the cherries  
are in bloom._

[Haiku by Issa]


	19. Chapter 19

